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iRENv^us Letters 



SECOND SERIES 



WRITTEN BY 



REV. S. IRENiEUS PRIME, D.D. 



FOR THE 



NEW YORK OBSERVER 



WITH 



A Sketch of the Life and Death of the 
Author 



'■.'.. 1 



NEW YORK 

Published by the New York Observer 

31 Park Row 



73X12. 



Copyright, 1885, by 
New York Observer. 



Press of 

M. H. Green, 

324-330 Pearl Street, 

New York. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 

BY THE EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK OBSERVER. 

This volume has been prepared in response to a wide- 
spread demand for a new series of Irenaeus Letters. 

The selection has been made from Letters which were writ- 
ten since the publication of the former volume and embraces 
many of the choicest writings of Dr. Prime; some of them 
are more personal and autobiographical than any in the pre- 
vious compilation and were chosen on that account. 

A biographical sketch of Rev. S. Irenaeus Prime, D.D., an 
account of his death and burial, together with the review of 
his life and character which was written by the Rev. Talbot 
W. Chambers, D.D,, all of which have been published in the 
New York Observer, are included in the book. 

This has been done in order to gratify a large number of 
friends and subscribers to the New York Observer, who have 
expressed the wish to possess in a permanent form some 
record of one whom they had known and honored, and 
whose writings they had so much enjoyed. 

The first series of Letters has had a large circulation, and 
there is abundant evidence that it has been a useful and in- 
teresting book. It is with the hope that this Second Series 
may be of equal value and interest, and that it may also be a 
fitting memorial of its author, that it is now offered to the 
public. 



THE NEW YORK OBSERVER. 



The New Yofk Observer is a National and Evangelical 
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CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Actor's Last Words 241 

Admiral and the Turk 7 

Amber Witch 215 

Assemblies of the Saints 57 

Babylon and Fire Island 171 

Babylon, Sojourn in 167 

Benefits of Mosquitoes 256 

Built a Church, How Two Cents 49 

Bull-fights and other Popular Amusements 195 

Burial, Thoughts on 362 

Burning up Old Sermons 53 

Changes in Fifty Years 46 

Children and the Church 294 

Dangers and Duties of the Rich 324 

Dannemora for Ten Years 284 

Dead and Living, Thoughts concerning 362 

Death of Presidents of the United States 65 

Dinner in Bath, England 370 

Easthampton on Long Island 180 

Emerson and the Children 84 

Englewood : its Pastor and its Patriarch 124 

Erromanga, Five Martyrs of 141 

Error of a Moment, Sorrow of a Life 302 

Explaining away the Gospel 135 

Fanny Kemble on Bible and Theatre 238 

Gambling in the Parlor 263 

Going into the Country 374 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Good Preaching without Paying for it ^ . . 230 

Graves of my Ancestors 27 

Great and Good Surgeon 112 

Great Man ? What is a g2 

Great Preaching in Small Places 223 

Greatest Thief in the World 316 

Griffin's (Dr.) College Boys 35 

Hallowing the Fiftieth Year 42 

Hatfield, Dr. Edwin F q7 

Heart of the Catskills ig2 

Hero of Jacob's Well igS 

Hill, Honorable and Honest John 104 

Horse-race, The 165 

How Two Cents Built a Church 



49 

Hunger of the Soul 274 

Ill-timed Wit. 246 

Influence with Rich Widows 288 

Kentucky Horse-sale 161 

Little Behindhand 377 

Loathing Light Bread 334 

Longfellow's Songs Ended 80 

Long Island Ministers 175 

Maiden of the Mountain ; 366 

Methodist Friends, Some of my 127 

Missionary Lady in Islands of the Sea 145 

Model Rural Pastor loi 

Modern Magdalen 271 

Moral Culture of Poor Women 319 

More than there's Business for 327 

Nantucket, In and about , 157 

Nantucket, To and about , 153 

Northern Delegates in Southern General Assembly 60 

Not the Ancient Saint 207 

Old-fashioned Thanksgivings 250 

Old Gentleman Dead ? Is the 385 

Old White Meeting-house 31 

Overtaxing the Brain 348 

Philosophers getting Knowledge 341 

Poe, Edgar Allan 149 

Preaching Other Men's Sermons 227 



CONTENTS. vii 

PAGE 

Prime, Samuel Irenaeus, Biographical Sketch i 

" " " Death of g 

" " " Funeral of ... 12 

" " " Character and Life-work of 19 

Prison (In) with the Cholera 137 

Procrustes the Stretcher 3S1 

Recipe for Happiness 306 

Rector, Minister, Parson and Domine 234 

Returning after Fifty Years 38 

Righteous Man's Prayer, Story of 313 

Ripley, Hours with George 8S 

Rogers, Burial of Dr 76 

Seeking Rest and Finding None 203 

Shams of Society 219 

Shelter Island and Whitefield 183 

Shepherd of Newburg 108 

Short, Sharp and Decisive 277 

Sims, Dr. J. Marion 112 

Social Element in Church Life 355 

Society of Young Thieves 291 

Spice of Wickedness 253 

Stone, David M 121 

Strawberries and Cream 330 

Success or Failure ? Was it 260 

Sunday with a Western Farmer 188 

Sunshine in Artist's Studio 280 

Thermometer of the Church 358 

Tragedy in the Tombs 351 

Training Boys to be Good Citizens ... 337 

War Averted : Scene in U. S. Senate 68 

Waymark in the March of Time, Another 344 

Well and Wanted 267 

Wetting the Ropes 309 

Whitefield and Shelter Island 183 

Williams, Dr. William R 116 

Winter Holidays 298 

Worse than Wasted Life 149 

Young Man Void of Understanding 211 



IREN^US LETTERS. 



SAMUEL IRENiEUS PRIME. 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, 
From the New York Observer, Aug. 6, 1885. 

Samuel Iren^eus Prime was born at Ballston, N ,Y., No- 
vember 4, 18 1 2. 

His great-grandfather, Rev. Ebenezer Prime, was graduated 
at Yale College in 1718. He was a Presbyterian clergyman 
of distinction, for many years pastor at Huntington, L. I. 

His grandfather, Benjamin Young Prime, M.D., was grad- 
uated at Princeton in 1751. He obtained his medical degree 
at Leyden, became an accomplished physician, and wrote 
ably in several ancient and modern languages. His patriotic 
songs form part of the literature of the Revolution. 

His father, Rev. Nathaniel Scudder Prime, D.D., was grad- 
uated at Princeton in 1804, and became eminent as a preacher, 
a scholar and an instructor. He was the author of a work 
on "Christian Baptism " and a " History of Long Island." 

In his infancy the parents of " Irenseus" removed to Cam- 
bridge, Washington County, N. Y., where he spent his boy- 
hood, his father, N. S. Prime, being pastor of the Presbyte- 
rian church known as " The Old White Meeting-house." 

When not yet fourteen years old he entered Williams Col- 
lege, and was graduated in 1829 before he was seventeen. 
He studied theology in the Seminary at Princeton, and was 
licensed to preach in 1833, his first sermon being preached 
in Bedford, Westchester County, N. Y., where, two years ago, 
he preached on the fiftieth anniversary of the event. In the 
year following he accepted an invitation to preach at Ballston 
I 



2 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

Spa, N. Y., of which he writes thus in the " Irena;us Letter" 
of June 25, 1885 : 

" In the autumn of the year 1834 I came to the village of 
Ballston Spa, in the towns of Ballston and Milton, in Sara- 
toga County, State of New York. A young stranger, I sought 
the house of one to whom I had a letter of introduction, and 
the result was an engagement to preach six months on a 
salary at the rate of five hundred dollars a year. Before the 
half-year expired the people gave me a call, and I was or- 
dained and settled as their pastor in the month of June, 1835. 
The church itself was organized a few weeks only before I 
came, and it was therefore convenient and appropriate to 
hallow the fiftieth year after its formation and after my ordi- 
nation at the same time. And that has brought me away 
earlier than usual from the city into the delicious atmosphere 
of this rural region. 

"Mine was a short pastorate. One brief year of labor and 
I was laid aside. And this suggests a caution to young min- 
isters and their people. In the zeal of his youth, the fresh 
pastor rushes upon his work as though he were not, in part 
at least, made of flesh. Conscious of great vitality, and un- 
taught by experience, he is ready to preach whenever he has 
a chance, as if there were no limit to his powers of endur- 
ance." 

After describing his habits of work in the severe climate 
of Saratoga County, he continues : 

"How long could a young man, of slender build and deli- 
cate lungs, expect to hold out, who preached three times every 
Sabbath, and held two or three meetings in the week, and 
made many pastoral visits in a congregation scattered four or 
five miles in every direction ? It was miserable economy of 
life and health. And the pastor and people were equally at 
fault in the matter. They asked and he did not refuse. 
Every Sabbath evening, after two full services, the men in the 
village would get up a team, sometimes two or three teams, 
and carry me off four or five miles into the country, where 
notice had been given of preaching in a school-house, and 
there we would have an earnest meetins: in which the lavmen 



SAMUEL IREN^US PRIME. 3 

participated while I did the speaking. Sometimes I lodged 
among the farmers on Sunday night, but more frequently 
rode home in the cold after a steam-bath in the crowded 
school-room." 

After a period of occupation in teaching at Newburg, N. Y., 
Dr. Prime became pastor of the Presbyterian church at 
Matteawan, N. Y., in 1837, where he remained for three years. 
He was accustomed to speak of this as the happiest experi- 
ence of his life. The Rev. Thomas A. Reeves, the present 
pastor of the Matteawan church, writes: "Many of the 
older members of the church and of the community well 
remember his pastorate. It covered the years from twenty- 
five to twenty-eight of his life, and closed the first seven 
years of the church's existence. It was a period of great 
activity, and of both temporal and spiritual prosperity. Nine- 
ty-four persons were received into the church during these 
three years. The parsonage was built, and Dr. Prime per- 
sonally did much to beautify the vicinity of the church by 
planting maples, which now have grown to large size and by 
their regularity and comfort bear witness to his taste and 
forethought. The semi-centennial of the Matteawan church 
occurred in 1883, and Dr. Prime was only prevented attend- 
ing by a severe attack of sciatica, which detained him at 
Saratoga. He sent me the following letter, which was read 
on that occasion :" 

REV. DR. prime's LETTER. 

Saratoga Springs, August 21, 1883. 

Rev. and Dear Sir: Your very kind letter addressed to 
me in New York has this day reached me at this place. The 
invitation to meet the people of your charge and such of 
them who survive and remain of my former charge in Mat- 
teawan, and join in the celebration of the Fiftieth Anniver- 
sary of the church's life, is very grateful to my feelings, while 
it fills me with deep regret that the state of my health for- 
bids me to attend. I am here under treatment, and am 
unable to move about except with painful aggravation of my 
complaint, from which, however, I am steadily recovering. 



4 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

How delighted would I be to join heart ahd voice with you 
and the people on this interesting occasion ! Mrs. Prime and 
I were in the dew of our youth when we took up our abode 
in Matteawan, and gave our lives to the service of that infant 
church. When I add that last week on Friday we celebrated 
the forty-eighth anniversary of our marriage you will per- 
ceive that nearly the entire life of your church has passed 
since I entered upon its pastoral care. 

It was then an ideal pastoral charge. Beautifully nestled 
at the foot of the mountains, near the great river, the people 
largely engaged in manufactures, liberal, hospitable, intelli- 
gent, and earnestly religious. I entered upon my labors 
with enthusiasm, and pursued them with constantly increas- 
ing ardor and enjoyment. My first residence was in the 
house on the west side of the beautiful Grecian temple that 
was our church. Soon my generous people built for my 
home the spacious and commodious parsonage which still 
stands as a memorial of their care for me and mine. Those 
fine trees that make so grateful a shade around it were 
planted, I may say, by my own hand. In the parsonage we 
often had the people as our guests, as we were their shep- 
herd. Many of our people lived three families under one 
roof. I often took tea in the basement or the attic, in whicli- 
ever the family resided, and the children were ray friends. I 
was said to know every child in the parish by name. Those 
who grew up to manhood and womanhood continue to be 
my friends, and it is enough for me to be reminded that I 
was the pastor in Matteawan, of one who speaks to me, to 
awaken my warmest interest. In foreign lands those young 
parishioners have hailed me as tlie friend of their childhood. 
One of them died in Paterson, N. J., a few days ago, whom I 
baptized. It is pleasant to me that Mr, Jabez Turner, who 
was an active member of the church when I was pastor, is 
and has long been an officer of the church in which I now 
statedly worship in New York. A few of my old friends 
survive in Matteawan. Their names and faces are familiar 
and precious. To them especially I send my love with these 
words. How well do I remember the prayer-meetings, the 



SAMUEL IREN^US PRIME. 5 

revivals, the conversions, the communion seasons which we 
all enjoyed ! The three happiest years of my ministerial life 
were spent in that charge. 

On the second Sabbath in October next I expect to preach 
my semi-centennial sermon in Bedford, N. Y., where I 
preached my first sermon fifty years ago. There and then I 
will testify to the loving-kindness of my Matteawan people, 
and to the sorrow with which I resigned my pastoral work 
from total failure of health — a work which I have never been 
able to resume. Other and far better men have followed me 
in that pleasant field ; the generation that knew me has 
passed away; few know that one of my name was ever a 
keeper of the flock on that mountain-slope ; but them that 
God gave me he will keep unto that day when it will be my 
exceeding joy to present them before our Father's face in the 
kingdom in heaven. 

That you, my dear brother, may be as happy in your work 
in Matteawan as I was forty-five years ago, and far more suc- 
cessful, is the earnest prayer of your friend in the gospel of 
Christ 

S. Iren^us Prime. 

His leaving his much-loved parish and entering upon his 
great life-work is best described in the following letter ad- 
dressed by him 

To the Presbyterian Congregation of Matteawan. 

Beloved Brethren : Three years ago this day I came 
among you. They have been years of uninterrupted peace 
and prosperity. The bond of mutual affection uniting us is 
so strong that notliing but sickness or death appears suffi- 
cient to separate us. While I have been with you I have 
been repeatedly solicited to come to other fields of labor and 
to take the charge of other churches in which my pecuniary 
condition would have been greatly improved. But my at- 
tachment to you and my views of duty would forbid me to 
leave this people for the sake of assuming any other pastoral 
charge. I have been happy here and willing to spend and be 



6 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

spent for you so long as God would give me strength to 
preach his blessed Word. 

When I was first settled here " I was sick and ye visited 
me." From that time I have struggled daily in the midst 
of my manifold labors against a disease that has disabled 
many ministers of the gospel and laid not a few in the grave. 
Often when others may have thought that I was neglecting 
my duty I have been seeking temporary relief from the insidi- 
ous effects of disease. Since my attack in October last it has 
manifested some symptoms that indicate clearly the necessity 
of a speady cessation of public speaking. 

Such being the will of Providence, " What are we that we 
should reply against God }" Bowing to that will, I have now 
to ask the congregation to unite with me in a request that 
the Presbytery will dissolve the pastoral relation subsisting 
between us. 

Knowing your interest in everything that concerns pastor 
and his family, I will add that after I had determined to rest 
from my labors in the ministry, another "great door and 
effectual has been opened to me." It will be my endeavor 
to do what I can for the good of my fellow-men through the 
columns of the Neiu York Observer. I regard it as a special 
mark of Divine favor that I have been permitted to look for- 
ward to such a field of usefulness when I am no longer able 
to preach the Word. And I wish it to be distinctly under- 
stood that my leaving you is caused solely by the state of 
my health, and the hope that after ceasing for a season to 
preach I may be able to resume pastoral labor with strength 
sufficient for the work. 

The Lord willing, I shall continue to supply your pulpit on 
the Sabbath, omitting my Wednesday-evening lectures, until 
ihe first of April next. On the last Sabbath in March I shall 
probably take my leave of a people among whom I have 
spent the happiest years of my life. 

That God will send to you a man after his own heart, who 
will be more faithful and successful than I have been, is the 
sincere and constant prayer of your unworthy pastor, 

Samuel I. Prime. 

Matteawan, Feb. 22, 1840. 



SAMUEL IRENMUS PRIME. J 

He entered in 1840 upon his duties as associate editor of 
the New York Observer, then under the charge of Messrs. 
S. E. and R. C. Morse and A. P. Cumings. In the course 
of a few weeks the Messrs. Morse practically relinquished 
their duties to their associate, whose aptitude for the work 
was evident from the first. Though constantly delicate in 
health, his literary labors were not confined to the columns 
of the Observer. His pen was employed in writing religious 
books, in advocating educational and benevolent enterprises 
in the secular press, and also in general literary work for 
various publishers in this city. But his body was not equal 
to the demands of his spirit, and in 1853, an almost helpless 
invalid, he sailed for Liverpool in the Devonshire, and spent 
a year in travel in Europe and the East. In 1858 Dr. Prime 
purchased an interest in the New York Observer, in which 
he had been acting editor since 1840, with the exception of 
a brief period, during which for a year he was one of the 
Secretaries of the American Bible Societ)^ and subsequently 
for a few months an editor of The Presbyterian. 

During the first few years of his editorial work Dr. Prime 
resided at Newark, N. J., where he was an active member 
of the congregation of the Third Presbyterian Church, then 
under the pastoral care of the Rev. Dr. H. N. Brinsmade. 
Of the large and flourishing Sunday-school of this church 
Dr. Prime was for some years the superintendent. His 
association with the establishment of the Public Library at 
Newark has been recorded in the New York Observer. In 
1850 he removed to Brooklyn, N. Y., where he resided until 
1858, when he established himself in New York City as a 
permanent resident. 

Besides the journey abroad in 1853, Dr. Prime, made an 
extensive European tour in 1866-67, and again in 1876-77. 
His letters during these various journeys were so frequent 
and full that most readers are equally familiar with his 
thoughts and experiences abroad and at home. 

His published works include "Travels in Europe and the 
East," " Letters from Switzerland," " The Alhambra and the 
Kremlin," "The Old White Meeting-house," "Annals of the 



8 JRENMUS LETTERS. 

English Bible," "Thoughts on the Death of Little Children," 
" The Power of Prayer" (a sketch of the Fulton Street prayer- 
meeting), with several continuations, " Memoirs of Rev. 
Nicholas Murray," " Under the Trees," and " Life of S. F. B. 
Morse." "The Power of Prayer," which was first published 
in 1859, was translated into several languages, and was re- 
printed in Europe, Asia and Africa, attaining, it is said, a 
circulation of more than 175,000 copies. 

He has frequently been a Commissioner to the General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and in 1883 he went 
as a delegate from the Northern body to the Southern Gen- 
eral Assembly. He has been Corresponding Secretary of the 
American Bible Society, of which he was one of the active 
directors ; Vice-President and Director of the American Tract 
Society ; Corresponding Secretary of the American Evan- 
gelical Alliance; Vice- President and Director of the Amer- 
ican and Foreign Christian Union ; President of the New 
York Association for the Advancement of Science and Art ; 
ex-President and Trustee of Wells College for Women ; Trus- 
tee of Williams College ; Honorary Fellow of the Incorpo- 
rated Society of (English) Authors, and a member of many 
other religious, benevolent and literary organizations. 

This enumeration gives but a faint impression of the 
breadth and variety of his activities in connection with re- 
ligious, benevolent and educational enterprises. 

As a member of an ecclesiastical body, he was untiring in 
his interest, quick and powerful in debate, indefatigable and 
efficient in committee. 

How this life ended in the fulness of its strength and 
brightness was told in the Observer of July 23. When such 
a man is taken out of this present world he leaves behind 
more than he takes away. His works do follow him. In 
the Church of Christ, in the New York Observer, in the so- 
cial circle and in the family, his faith, his hope, his love, his 
energy, his cheerfulness, his activity, will remain to inspire, 
guide and consecrate long after all of us who knew him have 
passed away. When John's disciples learned that their 
leader had nobly fallen they came and took the body and 



DEATH OF DR. PRIME. 9 

buried it, and went and told Jesus. Unto Him we may go 
with the certainty of finding all the sympathy and help which 
is needful, however great the loss or sorrow ; and because He 
lives we shall live also. 



DEATH OF REV. SAMUEL IREN^US PRIME, D.D. 

From the New York Observer, July 23, 1885. 

Never since the New York Observer was established has 
it carried to the hearts of its readers such a burden of personal 
sorrow as it bears to-day, in the intelligence of the death of 
its Senior Editor, the Rev. Samuel Iren/eus Prime, D.D. 
That pen to which its readers for nearly fifty years have look- 
ed each week for words of counsel and comfort, whose instruc- 
tions had become to them a part of their very lives, even as 
the voice of a beloved father, has ceased to write. On Sat- 
urday last, soon after noonday, he entered into rest. 

For more than a year Dr. Prime has not enjoyed his for- 
mer vigorous health. Without any loss of the wonderful activ- 
ity of mind, and elasticity of spirit, and cheerfulness of heart for 
which he was so distinguished, and which with other endow- 
ments made him such a blessing to his friends and to the 
world, it has been apparent to those nearest to him that the 
ph\'sical frame in which his tireless mind was set was begin- 
ning to show signs of serious wear. We do not think that he 
ever fully recovered from the shock that his nervous system 
received in the disastrous fire which consumed the offices 
of the Observer ; when, after his own narrow escape, he was 
compelled helplessly to look on at the peril of his kindred 
and associates, and when two of the latter, one of whom had 
served with him more than forty years, perished in the flames. 
During the past year there has been a more decided weakening 
of his vital energy. All through the last winter he was more 
than ever before confined to his house, and it was but seldom 
that we enjoyed his cheerful and cheering presence at our 
office. But his pen never ceased to be a medium of commq- 



lO IREN^US LETTERS. 

nication with our readers, and his Letters, under his familiar 
signature, Iren^us, and his editorial articles, were furnished 
as regularly as they were waited for by tens of thousands of 
expectant hearts. 

On the 4th of June he left the city with his wife to spend two 
or three weeks at Saratoga Springs and to fulfil an engage- 
ment to preach at Ballston Spa on the 7th, the fiftieth anni- 
versary of his ordination and installation as the first pastor of 
the Presbyterian church at that place. On the ist of July he 
attended the Commencement at Williams College, of which 
he was a Trustee. After tarrying for three or four days with 
a kinsman at his country home at White Creek, N. Y., and 
with a friend at Hoosick Falls, he started on Monday for 
Manchester, Vt., to make arrangements to pass the month of 
August with his family at that place, where he expected to 
celebrate, on the 17th, the fiftieth anniversary of his marriage. 

For several days lie had been suffering occasionally from 
severe pain in the region of the liver. On his way to Man- 
chester it became so severe that on stepping from the cars 
and meeting his friend, the Rev. Dr. J. D. Wickham, he asked 
for a physician, and was introduced on the platform to Dr. 
Lewis H. Hemenway, who went with him directly to the 
Equinox House, and who was his faithful and skilful medical 
attendant until he breathed his last. The attack proved to 
be caused by congestion of the liver. It yielded readily to 
treatment, and before the end of the week he was nearly re- 
covered. In the mean time he was joined by his wife and by 
his brother, William C. Prime, who had been summoned to his 
bedside, not from any apprehension that his illness was of an 
alarming character, but that he might have their presence 
while he should be confined at the hotel. 

On Sunday morning, July 12th, as Dr. Hemenway was 
leaving the room to attend public worship. Dr. Prime asked 
him to wait a moment, and attempted to utter a request ; but 
his eyes filled with tears and he said to his brother, " Give 
me the pencil and paper ;" and he wrote, in bed, the follow- 
ing, which he desired the doctor to hand to the pastor of the 
church : 



DEATH OF DR. PRIME. II 

"To the pastor : 

"A stranger in town being ill desires the congregation to 
unite with him in thanks to God for his goodness in partially 
restoring him and in praying for complete recovery." 

And he added for the eye of the pastor alone : " No name 
to be mentioned." 

These were the last lines that his hand ever traced. 

In the course of the day he engaged at intervals with his 
wife and brother in conversation on a variety of topics in 
which he was always deeply interested. Some of these sub- 
jects were : Attending upon divine service on the Sabbath in 
order to worship God instead of merely to hear a sermon : — 
The increasing evil tendency, especially in New England, of 
hiring ministers by the year instead of having pastors per- 
manently installed : — He talked with special delight on the 
otieness of the faith in various Christian churches that are 
separated by non-essential differences of opinion : — of the 
modern theory of evolution as opposed to the teachings of 
the Bible : — of the notion of many physiologists and the 
practical evil effect of their doctrine, that the brain and not 
the soul does the thinking, and that man is a machine and 
not a living spirit inhabiting a physical body. All this con- 
versation was free and social and not at all in the form of 
discussion or dogmatism. It was in perfect consonance with 
the calm, delightful, summer Sabbath day, the heaven-sent 
breezes of which came in at the window and fanned him as he 
lay waiting for the messenger that was already at the door. 

On Sunday afternoon, after sitting up for some time he 
rose and walked with a firm step to the bed, and lying down 
quietly, closed his eyes and apparently fell asleep. The doc- 
tor entered a few moments after, and, approaching the bed- 
side, spoke to him, but received no answer. The mind which 
for more than seventy years had been active and communi- 
cative, was to hold no more intercourse with the outer world. 
He recognized those who were around him, but he was never 
able to converse ; he replied to questions only in monosyl- 
lables. On Monday morning his daughter, Mrs. Stoddard and 



12 IRENALUS LETTERS. 

Rev. Dr. Stoddard arrived and were recognized by him, by a 
significant loolc. 

He lingered in this condition, suffering no pain and giving 
no signs of active consciousness, growing weaker from day 
to day until Saturday, the i8th, at a quarter to one o'clock, 
when the wheel of life stood still, and he passed away so gently 
and peacefully that it was impossible to tell at what moment 
his happy spirit left its tenement and went up to join the 
company of the redeemed in heaven. 

We cannot attempt at this time to give any sketch of the 
life of our beloved associate and head. All that we can do is 
to acquaint our readers all over the world with the circum- 
stances of the departure of one than whom perhaps no one 
of his day was better known and more beloved, or had more 
personal friends attached to him by tender ties and memo- 
ries of delightful intercourse, or was exerting a wider influ- 
ence for good in so many lands. 

The remains of Dr. Prime were brought to this city, where 
arrangements were made for the funeral services at the West 
Presbyterian Church — Rev. Dr. John R. Paxton's. He will 
be laid to rest in the Woodlavvn Cemetery. 



FUNERAL OF DR. PRIME. 

The funeral of the Rev. Samuel Irenaeus Prime, D.D., 
took place on Wednesday, July 22, in the West Presbyterian 
Church in Forty-second Street, in this city, of which Dr. 
Prime has been a regular attendant for a number of years. 

Although it was one of the hottest days of midsummer, in 
a comparatively deserted city, the church was crowded with 
persons who came to show their love for a valued friend 
and to sympathize with a bereaved family. Among them 
were many whose names are knowm all over the land, and 
there were others not a few, unknown, who came to mourn 
their friend and benefactor. The proportion of gray-haired 
men among the congregation was noticeable, 



FUNERAL OF DR. PRIME. 13 

The body, inclosed in a black cloth-covered coffin, was 
carried up the main isle, while the organ played a solemn 
dirge and the congregation stood. It was followed by the 
family of the deceased and the associate editors and em- 
ployes of the New York Observer. The plate upon the 
coffin bore the simple record : 

REV. SAMUEL IREN^US PRIME, D.D. 

Born Nov. 4, 1812. 
Died July 18, 1885. 

An open Bible formed of white and yellow roses with the 
inscription in blue violets, " Blessed are the dead which die 
in the Lord," Rev. 14: 13, was the only ornament; and this 
floral tribute came from those who had joined with Dr. 
Prime a few months before in celebrating his forty-fifth an- 
niversary as the Editor of the New York Observer. 

When all were seated, the beautiful poem of Alice Gary, 

" One sweetly solemn thought," 

was sung with deep feeling by Miss Henrietta Beebe, who 
has enjoyed the friendship of Dr. Prime since first as a 
young girl she began to sing in church and concert in this 
city. Passages of Scripture were then read by Rev. Dr. 
Thomas S. Hastings, after which the hymn 

" Pilgrims of the night" 

was sung by the choir. Rev. Dr. John R. Paxton, the pastor 
of the church, then delivered the funeral address, as follows : 

REV. DR. J. R. PAXTON'S ADDRESS. 

It is a great thing to live seventy-three years in this 
world and thoroughly earn one's grave, and leave a record 
without a blot, a name without a stain, and a character and 
career that make the whole country debtor to the dead. 

This is literally true of Dr. Prime. We are all in debt to 
him. When I was a lad in a country village, taking my first 
wondering view of books and papers, the " Irenseus Letters" 



14 IREN^US LETTERS. 

in the New York Observer were the delight of my Sundays. 
Last week, over in Pennsylvania, at an old church in Cum- 
berland Valley, it was told that " Irenseus " was a-dying. 
"Alas!" said an old lady, "he was my best preacher these 
forty years." His Letters were a staff to help me through 
every week, bringing comfort and strength every time, and 
shedding light upon one's way through this perplexing 
world. 

This is the way it was all over the land, in ten thousand 
churches, and homes, and hearts, when the news was flashed 
by telegraph that Irenaeus Prime was dying. I call this true 
fame and a life well worth living. Dear friends. Dr. Prime 
was a great power in this land. For more than fifty years he 
has been by voice and pen on the side of every good cause 
that needed advocates and defenders in our country. He 
has preached to two generations the old story of the cross, 
and the principles and conduct of a useful, upright, and 
noble life. His name is a household word, and his enduring 
fame is secure, like Washington's, in the hearts and grati- 
tude of his countrymen. For I know of no man in this coun- 
try, in the past fifty years, in public or private station, who 
has made a lasting mark for good on more minds than Dr. 
Prime. He entered the family — the foundation of your 
churches and state. He inculcated a pure religion. He 
recommended Christianity to the young and old by the 
charm and grace and geniality of his nature and writings. 
Dr. Prime was no ascetic, seeing only the hard and gloomy 
side of life and religion, but at home with his Lord and 
Master at a wedding in Cana, where joy was unconfined, as 
well as tender and sympathetic at a funeral or in the house of 
mourning. 

Dr. Prime was conservative by nature and education, yet 
never a bigot or fanatic on any question agitated and de- 
bated in the land for half a century. I think if all his letters 
were bound in a book, that if all his writings were examined, 
the most careful scrutiny would not find a line to expunge, 
or a page that his best friend would regret he wrote. 

The remarkable thing — the striking characteristic in Dr. 



FUNERAL OF DR. PRIME. 1 5 

Prime — was the well-balanced head he carried above his 
shoulders. He had no eccentricities. He had no pet vir- 
tue, no one little hobby, no one special excellence which he al- 
ways aired and rung changes on. Nay, he was a broad- 
minded man ; he had many windows to his mind ; he took 
in light from every quarter, and thus could write and did 
write truthfully, charmingly, profitably on all questions 
that engaged the interest or concerned the conduct of 
human life. 

Dr. Prime was well named " Irenaeus." His life was an 
irenicon. He hated war. He loved peace, and studied 
peace, and advocated peace in church and state and family. 
Yet there was nothing weak or compromising in his nature 
or treatment of great questions or fundamental principles. 
When a principle was at stake he set his face lilce a flint, 
and, like Athanasius, would stand against the world. He 
would go two miles with you any time out of courtesy, by 
the grace and consideration of a gentle and tolerant mind ; 
but if anybody coerced him he would not budge an inch. If 
any impious hand touched the ark of God his voice was a 
menace and his attitude martial at once. Hands off ! he 
cried, and no trifling or liberties with the essential truths of 
Christianity or the integrity of Holy Scripture as the in- 
spired word of God. 

Always by voice and pen Dr. Prime was the leading ad- 
vocate of the evangelical Protestant faith in this country. 
He was thorough-going in his orthodoxy. He never would 
compromise with the papacy, or with atheistic science, or 
the new liberal theology. But this is not the time or place 
to dwell upon the achievements of his long and distin- 
guished life. On other occasions justice will be done his 
memory, and the church's debt to Dr. Prime clearly set 
down, as editor, preacher, presbyter, and author. Let it 
suffice to say, we have lost one of the best and wisest and 
most loyal and distinguished champions of Christianity in 
the land. When shall we see his like again ? Who can 
take up the pen that wrote those unique and delightful 
" Irenaeus Letters" these many years, now that the hand 



1 6 irenjEus letters. 

that wielded it so cunningly and skilfully is stiff in death ? 
Alas ! alas ! a great man and leader has fallen in Israel. 

It is a personal affliction. It is a calamity to the whole 
church. I may say that in a sense it is a national loss and 
sorrow, for in every State of the Union Dr. Prime had con- 
stituents, and worked righteousness and comforted hearts 
and fortified souls in virtue. For to-day, all over the land, 
there are tears and sorrow for " Irenaeus" dead. Thank 
God for his noble life; for his long career; for his pure 
character; for his deep piety; for his fertile and brilliant 
pen, and his great influence in the widening lives of thou- 
sands whose steps he directed by his counsels, and whose 
hearts he strengthened by his unwavering faith in God. 
We loved him in life, for there was none more lovable, more 
genial, more kind ; a hand always open, a heart always 
sweet, and a smile and tone that were cheering as sunshine, 
and welcome as fresh air. We loved him in life; we mourn 
him dead, and will cherish his memory as an inspiration to 
high and noble aims and deeds. 

Thank God for one thing — that there was no decrepitude, 
no long invalidism, no period of wasting and suffering. No, 
he worked up to the last week ; his brain kept its clear light, 
his hand was firm at his desk, the best wine was at the last. 
Down to the end he did his day's work, and with his hand 
on the plough he was called away to see the Lord in the 
paradise of God — that Master whom he loved supremely 
and served so faithfully for seventy-three years. There is 
nobody left just like him. He will have no successor. But 
as long as this country endures and Christianity is prized. Dr. 
Irenaeus Prime is sure of honor and fame for the good he 
accomplished, the life he lived, the God he glorified ; as citi- 
zen, preacher, editor, author, and man. 

May the unblotted record of his life, and the tears and 
sorrow of ten thousand souls in this country for one they 
admired and loved as teacher and helper in this life-journey 
— may this record and their tears be the best consolation of 
the widow and children and friends of him who is now in 
heaven, but whose body is with us still ! 



FUNERAL OF DR. PRIME. IJ 

Dear friends, the question is, when a man dies, not how 
much money did he leave, nor how many enemies did he 
slay, nor how many machines did he invent, but how many 
hearts bled, how many tears were shed for him, how many 
mourned him dead. Judged by this test, no man had a wider 
fame. 

" Farewell, father and friend, farewell !" 

At the conclusion of Dr. Paxton's address the Rev. 
Thomas S. Hastings, D.D., Professor in Union Theological 
Seminary, spoke as follows : 

ADDRESS BY DR. HASTINGS. 

Often upon funeral occasions the pastor feels that the 
character and career need explanation or defence or eulogy. 
It is not so to-day. We all know and honor and love the 
man whose loss we mourn, and need no one to introduce 
him to us. His life has been interwoven, to a degree rarely 
equalled, with the domestic, the ecclesiastical, and the public 
and civil life of our times. I remember that in my child- 
hood I looked up to him with a peculiar reverence as that 
" Irenseus" about whom so many good people were often 
talking. Then in early manhood I knew him as a contro- 
versialist, faithful and fearless in the cause of the truth as he 
understood it. In the trying times when discussion was 
hot, when thought clashed with thought, and feeling grap- 
pled with feeling, the gentle pen of " Irenaeus" became keen 
and quick alike in ward and in thrust. It was like that old 
legend which claimed that the Damascus blade gave forth 
both sparks and perfume. Then when f came to this city 
as a young pastor, many years ago, I confess I was surprised 
and delighted to discover the tenderness of his heart and 
the warmth of his sympathy. To a very wide constituency 
of the best people he was known only through his facile 
and graceful pen. But if you knew him in that way only 
you did not really know him. If you have not seen him 
with his children and grandchildren about him ; if you have 
not seen him in the freedom of private, unconstrained fel- 

2 



18 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

lowship with his brethren loved and trusted ; if you have 
not seen him touched to the heart by the appeal of suffering 
and sorrow, then you have not really known him. With 
him how easy and quick was the transition from smiles to 
tears ! In the best sense, only the earnest can be mirthful ; 
only the strong can be tender. 

We must not think to-day only of our loss; we must look 
at the other side toward the home which he has just entered. 
In Guizot's words, " The dawn of the eternal day which 
fools call death," what a dawn it has been to our friend and 
brother ! As I was journeying hither to-day to attend this 
service, amid the crowd, alone with the thought of this 
friend, I wrote down, one after another, the names of dis- 
tinguished ministers who have died since I began my pro- 
fessional life here, nearly thirty years ago. Slowly the list 
increased, as I recalled one loved face after another, until I 
had thirty names — brilliant and blessed names — with all of 
whom our departed brother had enjoyed close and familiar 
fellowship. He was always bright and charming in such 
intercourse. I am sure the laity do not know how stimulat- 
ing, refreshing and delightful is the personal and profes- 
sional fellowship enjoyed by the ministry in this city. How 
much better it must be in heaven ! As I looked again at 
my list it touched me to see how I had these noble names 
grouped without reference to the denominations they repre- 
sented. There were Methodists and Baptists and Episcopa- 
lians and Congregational ists and Presbyterians all inter- 
mingled, and I could not help saying, — So heaven will have 
it : only earth can keep such men separate. How rich is 
heaven becoming! How many well-known hands have 
been stretched out to welcome the coming of our brother ! 
Oh ! it is a goodly company which is fast gathering on high, 
to which each new-comer is welcomed with a joy in strong 
contrast with the sorrow here. We must not look backward 
or downward, but onward and upward. Our brother is not 
dead. " In his own order," at his appointed time, the Lord 
has called him higher. I recall the quaint but touching 
verse of Baxter : 



CHARACTER AND LIFE-WORK OF DR. PRIME. 1 9 

" As for my friends, they are not lost ; 
The several vessels of thy fleet 
Though parted now, by tempests tost, 
Shall safely in the haven meet." 

We thank God for what our brother was and for what he 
has done, and trust in our turn, through infinite grace, to 
follow where he has been permitted to go before us. So is 
our sorrow full of gratitude and hope. 

"Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees 1" 



The assembly then united with the Rev. William Ormis- 
ton, D.D., in a fervent and comforting prayer, after which 
the hymn "Jerusalem the glorious," a favorite hymn of Dr. 
Prime, was sung by the choir, and after the benediction had 
been pronounced the family retired. 

Then the coffin was opened and the long procession of 
friends took their last look upon the calm and venerable 
face of "Irenaeus." In the afternoon the interment was 
made privately in Dr. Prime's lot at Woodlawn Cemetery. 



CHARACTER AND LIFE-WORK OF 
DR. S. IREN^US PRIME. 

BY REV. T. W. CHAMBERS, D.D. 

That few men in the ministry or in the editorial profes- 
sion were so widely or so favorably known throughout the 
country as our friend is apparent from the general expression 
of regret and sympathy with which the news of his death 
was received in all quarters, and even by many who had 
never seen his face in the flesh. This was due partly to his 
natural characteristics, partly to the peculiar circumstances 
of his career. The first time I ever saw him was in the year 



20 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

1 841 or 1842, when he was one of the Secretaries of the 
American Bible Society, and from that day to the present 
he has been a conspicuous figure in the eye of the Christian 
public. Books, letters, editorials, journeys at home and 
abroad, and his residence at or near the metropolis, together 
with his public spirit and his readiness for every good word 
and work, brought him into contact with all the movements 
of the time and made him a prominent factor in the onward 
march of events. 

What were the salient features of his character ? He was 
not, in the common acceptation of the phrase, " a self-made 
man." On the contrary, he received a careful and liberal 
education, first in his father's house, and afterwards at Wil- 
liams College and in the Theological Seminary at Princeton. 
He was a diligent student, not only of books, but also of 
men and things, and often, in later years, he reminded me of 
what the late Dr. T. H. Skinner said of Dr. Henry B. Smith — 
" he had more usable knowledge than any man I ever knew." 
His insight was keen and his memory retentive, and he knew 
how to lay up stores for unforeseen emergencies. His culture 
was broad, and whatever was lost for lack of specific devo- 
tion to a single subject was compensated by the width of his 
outlook and his general grasp of the field of knowledge in 
its outlines. His power of application was very great, and 
his mind worked easily and readily. Writing, which to many 
men is a labor, even in the case of some who have had years 
upon years of experience, to him was rather pleasure than 
toil. He set about it without reluctance, and finished it 
without weariness. He did not need to pump from a deep 
well : the spring poured forth of its own accord. When he 
turned his attention to a topic, his thoughts, apparently 
without an effort on his part, took shape and arranged them- 
selves in a natural order of development. All he had to do 
was to clothe them in appropriate words. This he did with 
facility and rapidity, and, strange to say, with exceeding ac- 
curacy, so that often in a score of pages there would be no 
need, on a careful review, of erasing or inserting a single 
word. Unlike most persons, he could do his best at first. In 



CHARACTER AND LIFE-WORK OF DR. PRIME. 21 

this way one can account for the enormous amount of liter- 
ary composition accomplished by him in the course of his 
life, and for its general excellence. It was not task-work, 
wrought under whip and spur when the mind was jaded, 
but rather, to use Bacon's metaphor, the first flowing of the 
grapes when subjected to gentle pressure. He wrote because 
he had something to say, and he said it, always with perspi- 
cuity, and sometimes with uncommon weight and force. No 
rhetorical ornaments were sought for, but the reliance was 
upon the truth and appropriateness of the sentiment and the 
directness with which it was conveyed. 

Closely allied with this power of productive work was the 
natural vivacity of his spirit. If ever a man knew, experi- 
mentally, the difference between work and worry, it was he. 
Trials and perplexities of various kinds befell him, as they 
are sure to befall any one in such relations as he held, but 
none of them were able to clog his steps or impair his habit- 
ual cheerfulness. He seemed to rise above them as if by an 
elastic bound, and to move in a serene and cloudless atmos- 
phere. Nature and grace concurred to produce this happy 
result. His sunny temperament inclined him to look upon 
the bright side of everything, and his steadfast faith in a 
gracious and overruling Providence enabled him always to 
see the silver lining behind the darkest cloud. Nor was this 
buoyancy of spirit confined only to himself. It was conta- 
gious, and often helped to lighten the burdens of others. 
Dr. Prime had a rich vein of humor and an inexhaustible 
fund of incident and anecdote. Upon these he drew at fit- 
ting times and places, and always with success. Hence the 
head of an important literary institution, of which our friend 
was a trustee, said of him after his death: "His genial 
sweetness and his consummate tact, in how many ways have 
I seen them avert disaster and confusion in matters of great 
delicacy and importance !" And again : " In the strife of 
tongues how much his wise wit seemed able to overcome !" 
This testimony will not seem strange to any who have 
mingled in social or ecclesiastical circles with him to whom 
it is borne. His pleasantry was natural, graceful, and with- 



22 IREN^US LETTERS. 

out a sting. He laughed with his brethren, not at them, and 
they will all feel that this world is less pleasant since he was 
taken out of it. 

But he was able, according to the apostolic precept, not 
only to rejoice with them that do rejoice, but also to weep 
with them that weep. His sympathy with the sorrowing was 
profound and tender and unaffected. He entered thoroughly 
into their feelings, and was afflicted in their affliction. Mani- 
fold evidences of this are seen in his book on the " Death of 
Little Children," his occasional writings, and the Letters 
with which all readers of the Observer are familiar. But far 
more are hidden in the private records of individuals and 
families, not only in his immediate neighborhood, but 
through a wide extent of country. His position and charac- 
ter made him the receptacle of tales of sorrow, often from 
those who knew him only by reputation. Sometimes these 
were accompanied by requests of a very unreasonable na- 
ture. But this fact did not chill his sympathy or stop the 
current of his charities. Calmly putting aside the absurd or 
extravagant, he ministered aid as it lay in his power, and 
never withheld the kind words which do good like a medi- 
cine. It is easy for one to say this, but only those who have 
had a similar experience can estimate the draft thus made 
not only on his purse, but upon his time, his hands, his feel- 
ings. Sometimes it is harder to bear others' burdens than 
our own. Dr. Prime, as minister and editor, had more than 
his share, but he carried the load as few men could, and he 
did it uncomplainingly and meekly. 

He was a man of public spirit, and a constant friend of the 
great religious and benevolent and educational institutions of 
the age. In any important assemblage in aid of such objects 
he was usually seen upon the platform, not from curiosity or 
a love of display, but from a genuine interest in the matter 
in hand. His zeal was bounded by no narrow or sectarian 
lines ; whether it were a Bible or a tract society, in the inter- 
est of home missions or of foreign, for a college or a semi- 
nary, for the Evangelical Alliance or that of the Reformed 
churches, for the advancement of literature or of science or 



CHARACTER AND LIFE-WORK OF DR. PRIME. 23 

of art, he was ready to render such service as lay in his 
power. And his position often enabled him to give very 
efficient aid both by his voice and his pen. His spirit was 
truly catholic. Although warmly attached to the evangelical 
system as held by the church in which he was reared, and in 
whose communion his whole life was spent, he habitually 
cherished a hearty sympathy with all sister-churches. And 
this feeling grew with his advancing years. He preferred to 
see points of agreement rather than those of difference, and 
longed for the closer fellowship of all who hold the Head. 
Hence, when the proposal was made to reunite the dissevered 
parts of the Presbyterian Church, North, he became at once 
a zealous and a judicious advocate of the reunion ; and when 
the project was consummated no man rejoiced more heartily 
than he. So, when fraternal relations with the Southern 
Church were restored, he was a member of the Commission 
which met the Southern Assembly at Lexington, Ky. His 
address on that occasion is said by one who was present to 
have been of great power through its tenderness. " He 
spoke of the past and conjured up its sacred memories so 
that old men wept." It was the eloquence of the heart, the 
spontaneous utterance of deep-seated convictions. And the 
end is not yet. 

Dr. Prime was a voluminous author. His published works 
include records of travel, biographies, sketches, collections of 
letters, and treatises on religious or scriptural subjects, some 
of which were translated into various languages and gained 
a very wide circulation. All of these do credit to his in- 
dustry and his ability, for it is not an ordinary man who 
gives forty volumes to the press. They are pleasing and 
wholesome, nor is there in one of them a line which the 
author would now wish to blot. But his chief work was not 
done in these, nor in connection with any of the important 
institutions of which he was President or Director or Trus- 
tee or Fellow. His labors in such directions, although 
neither few nor small, were incidental. They were performed 
from time to time as occasion required, and then ceased. 
They have left their mark upon the framework of Christian 



24 irenjEUs le tiers. 

society in this country, but his chief life-work was wrought 
in another field. 

In years to come he will be especially remembered as the 
head and inspiring genius of a great religious newspaper, one 
that in other respects as well as years leads the rich and va- 
ried column of religious journals in America; one that has 
remained steadily faithful to the evangelical and catholic 
principles upon which it was founded, and has pursued the 
even tenor of its way through well-nigh three quarters of a 
century. It is not easy to calculate the influence of such a 
paper. It enters the family and becomes a household friend. 
It instructs the young, and inspires and comforts the old. It 
forms opinion and shapes character. Its weekly visits are 
like the successive drops which, though singly of small im- 
portance, by dint of iteration wear away the stone. Alike in 
winter and summer, in the stately mansion and the rude ham- 
let, the moulding process goes on. They who have no books, 
or who, if they have them, shrink from the task of taking up 
a volume, yet find time to read a newspaper, and often it is 
the only pabulum of a literary kind that they relish. The 
field of a religious journal, therefore, especially if it be widely 
circulated, is immensely important. In this field Dr. Prime 
labored for five-and-forty years, and here he faithfully exer- 
cised all his gifts, natural and acquired. 

The results show how well he was qualified for the work. 
He was a born editor. Not only in leading articles and in 
brief, crisp paragraphs, but also in all that constitutes the 
make-up of a newspaper he had an indescribable tact. He 
knew what to insert, and also — a matter equally important — 
what to omit. What it did not suit his convenience to treat 
himself he could procure to be treated by others. And so 
his journal was a mirror of the times, as seen from a relig- 
ious point of view. It was faithful to the truth as its con- 
ductors saw it, and yet not dogmatic or denunciatory. It 
stood upon a platform like that of the Evangelical Alliance, 
and lent its powerful aid to every enterprise conceived and 
carried on in that spirit. Against Romanism, formalism, and 
all shapes of scepticism^ latent or avowed, it was aggressive 
and intolerant. Its readers were fortified against insidious 



CHARACTER AND LIFE-WORK OF DR. PRIME. 2$ 

errors, and yet well supplied with positive truth in its ethical 
and practical aspects. Dr. Prime's long experience made 
him an adept in every particular of editorial management, 
and his associates willingly accepted his as the presiding 
mind of the establishment. The Observer, as it stands to-day, 
and as it has stood for a generation, is his true and enduring 
monument, bearing, as it does, in every feature the impress 
of his rich and versatile genius. He made it what it is. He 
not only preserved the aim of its founders, but carried it out 
more largely and in more varied directions, so that its posi- 
tion, and what it stands for in metropolitan journalism, are 
known and read of all men. 

But besides the general character of the paper as an out- 
spoken champion of evangelical truth, it had a peculiar and 
characteristic feature in the " Letters of Irenseus," one of 
which appeared every week. They treated of every imagin- 
able subject, and were as natural and easy and graceful as 
the actual correspondence of a literary man with his personal 
friends. Unstudied and artless, written seemingly at the 
point of the pen, they yet produced the effect of the highest 
art. Their informal character allowed the writer to say any- 
thing he chose within the bounds of good sense and good 
taste — bounds which he never transgressed, and the familiar 
ton^and skilful touch often allured the reader like one of 
Cowper's matchless epistles. The result was to establish a 
sort of relationship between the writer and his varied read- 
ers, so that each of the latter looked upon the letter as if it 
were addressed to himself. It was not regarded as a proper 
subject for criticism, like an ordinary editorial, but rather as 
a free outpouring of friendly feeling, an unstudied expression 
of sentiments, such as a man makes to his fellows under the 
seal of confidence. In this view they were eagerly welcomed 
and enjoyed. Outpourings of the heart go to the heart, and 
Dr. Prime was so constituted that he could reach exactly the 
average of his readers, going neither too high nor too low, 
and carrying useful suggestions in a simple and most attrac- 
tive manner. Such writing seems very easy to the inexperi- 
enced, and yet in reality the ability to do it well is a very 
rare gift. Careless ease is the last attainment of a writer. 



26 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

Men who could prepare a very weighty paper for a Quarterly 
Review would stumble hopelessly in the effort to reproduce 
the tone of familiar and intelligent conversation in a readable 
letter of a column's length. To be natural without being 
obvious, and playful without becoming silly, to teach without 
being tedious, to be fresh and vivacious without extrava- 
gance, are qualities by no means common. Yet Dr. Prime 
had them all, and year after year he poured forth a continu- 
ous stream of such articles, never repeating himself, never 
falling far below his average, and often rising greatly above it. 
It remains for me to say a word respecting Dr. Prime's in- 
tercourse with his ministerial brethren. This was always 
pleasant and helpful. It was a great gratification to him 
when, cut off from the possibility of having a pulpit of his 
own, he was able to render service on occasion to those who 
required aid in fulfilling their office. In advanced years the 
state of his health prevented this from being often done. 
But it rarely hindered him from attending the weekly gath- 
erings of a clerical association in this city, now more than 
half a century old. Here his presence was a conspicuous 
and most agreeable feature. He never seemed out of spirits. 
His good-humor was pervading and infectious. His recollec- 
tions of men and things were so vivid and so ready, and his 
knowledge of affairs so complete and accurate, that no sub- 
ject was ever started on which he could not throw some 
needed light and give some shining illustration. His wit 
coruscated, his playfulness was exuberant yet never exces- 
sive. In the greatest mirth or in reciting the most amusing 
incident he never forgot the dignity of a Christian minister. 
He was cheerful himself, and the cause of an untold amount 
of cheerfulness in others. There is no member of that cir- 
cle who will not feel that the joy of its fellowship has been, 
at least for the time, eclipsed by the removal of our genial, 
kind and lively associate, whose years did not lessen his vi- 
vacity, and whose experience was so varied and entertaining. 



THE GRAVES OF MY ANCESTORS. 2/ 



THE GRAVES OF MY ANCESTORS. 

»' My boast is not that I deduce my birth 
From loins enthroned and rulers of the earth ; 
But higher far my proud pretensions rise, — 
The son of parents passed into the skies." 

It is not often the lot of any man to stand in the midst 
of the graves of six generations of his own family and name. 
Having just made a pious pilgrimage to these tombs, I may 
be pardoned for speaking of the reminiscences awakened by 
this very interesting and somewhat extraordinary visit to the 
resting-place of tlie dead. 

The old town of Huntington, on Long Island, in the State 
of New York, has a history that precedes the War of Amer- 
ican Independence, and bears the scars of that conflict to 
this day. In the midst of the village rises a Rill which was 
selected before the Revolution as the cemetery of the town. 
It was also the site of the encampment of a detachment of 
British and Tory soldiers, under the command of Colonel 
Thompson, afterwards Count Rumford. These soldiers took 
possession of the town, tore out the seats of the church, con- 
verted the building into a military depot, carried off the bell 
and broke it, and when the war was substantially ended they 
tore the church building down and used the timber for block- 
houses and barracks. These buildings were set up in the 
midst of the graveyard ; many of the graves were levelled, 
and the tombstones used in making fireplaces and ovens 
Many persons of the last generation testified that they saw 
loaves of bread that had been baked in these ovens with the 
reversed inscriptions of the tombstones of their friends on 
the lower crusts. Some of the people anticipated the inva- 
sion of these barbarians, and taking up the gravestones of 
their relatives buried them on the spot, and dug them up 
and reset them when the enemy retired. 

The grave of my great-grandfather, of whom I shall have 
much to say, was honored by the colonel in command, who 



28 IRENyEUS LETTERS 

pitched his tent at the side of it, so, as he said, that " every 
time he went out or in he could tread on the old rebel." 
But this brutality did not disturb the sleep of the aged 
pastor, who after a long life of holy service in the ministry 
rested from his labors in the year of our Lord 1779. It is 
from his grave and those of succeeding generations that I 
have just returned. He was laid in this sepulchre one hun- 
dred and five years ago, and the record on his tombstone is 
easily legible to-day. 

The Rev. Ebenezer Prime, of whom I am writing, was 
born in Milford, Conn., in the year 1700, and was graduated 
at Yale College in 1718. Pursuing study for the pulpit, he 
was called to Huntington, across the Sound, where he began 
his ministry when nineteen years old, and was ordained in 
1723. There he labored, through evil and good report, en- 
during a great fight of afflictions, in conflicts and successes, 
until hjs death. It is not becoming in me, his great-grand- 
son, to speak in such terms of him as he deserves, and I will 
copy the words of another: " He was a man of sterling char- 
acter, of powerful intellect, and possessed the reputation of 
an able and faithful divine. His library was unusually large 
and valuable for the times. Few clergymen had an influence 
more general, and few, it may be said, more entirely deserved 
it." Although the most of his manuscripts, as well as many 
of his valuable books, were mutilated or destro3'ed by the 
British, yet it appears from the register of texts, dates and 
places of preaching, which he kept with great care, that he 
wrote more than three thousand sermons, some of which 
were of great leitgth. I have many of them ; they are writ- 
ten neatly, but in a hand so fine as to make them difficult to 
read. I have taken up his diary and sought to make an 
extract, but there is something very sacred in the private 
thoughts of a saint who wrote them down more than a cen- 
tury and a half ago: here they lie almost as hidden as he 
lies in the grave I have just visited, and they ought not to 
be disturbed. It is awful to read the outgoings of such a 
soul: "February 14, 1745. O my God, forgive me for the 
sake of the blood and wounds and death of thy dear Son, 



THE GRAVES OF MY ANCESTORS. 29 

anJ make me clean through his blood, Amen, for Jesus' 
sake. Amen." I have all his published sermons, with the 
exception of one that he preached in Jamaica, L. I., at the 
funeral of Mrs. Wilmot, wife of the pastor of that church. 
If any old family on Long Island, or not on it, will find a 
copy of that discourse and send it to me they will confer a 
favor which will be acknowledged with great thankfulness. 

The son of this good man whose grave is by his side, 
Benjamin Young Prime, M.D., was educated at the College 
of New Jersey. He entered while it was yet in its cradle at 
Newark in 1748, and was graduated at Princeton in 1751. 
He went to Europe for the study of medicine, and after 
attending lectures in London, Edinburgh and Paris, he took 
his medical degree at the University of Leyden. The essay 
in Latin which he pronounced on the occasion was published, 
and a copy of it elegantly bound in quarto form was picked 
up in a foreign book-store and sent to me. He became a 
very accomplished scholar, writing and speaking with fluency 
the modern European languages, and making very comfort- 
able verse in the ancient tongues. Many examples of his 
success are around me now. At the outbreak of the Revo- 
lutionary War he fired the hearts of the people by popular, 
patriotic songs, which were read and sung over the country. 
In Duyckinck's Collections, and in Grisvvold's appendix to 
D'Israeli's " Curiosities of Literature" some of these poems 
are gathered. His patriotism made the family obnoxious 
to the Tory Thompson, who vented his spite in the insult 
to the grave of the father who died during the war. The 
son survived the war and died in 1791. 

Rev. Nathaniel Scudder Prime, D.D., a son of Dr. B. Y. 
Prime, was not buried here, and therefore I cannot speak 
of his grave as among the tombs of my ancestors, though he 
is nearer to me than any of the others. His grave is in the 
Cemetery of the Evergreens, on the west end of Long Island. 
But filial reverence and affection will justify me in copying 
from Dr. Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit" the 
portrait of my father. Dr. Sprague writes : 

" He was born in Huntington, L. I., on the 21st of April, 



30 IREN^US LETTERS. 

1785. He inherited from his father and grandfather a taste 
for letters which he cultivated through life, and transmitted 
to his posterity. I knew him quite well during the latter 
years of his life, and always regarded him as a noble specimen 
of a man and a minister. He was compactly built, rather in- 
clined to be short, had a fine, intelligent face, was quick and 
easy in his movements, and most agreeable in conversation. 
He had a mind of uncommon force and discrimination, a 
noble and generous spirit, simple and engaging manners; 
an invincible firmness in adhering to his own convictions; 
an earnest devotion to the best interests of his fellow-men ; 
an excellent talent for the pulpit; great tact at public busi- 
ness, and a remarkably graceful facility at mingling in a 
deliberative body. In private he had the gentleness of a 
lamb, but sometimes, in public debate, the lamb disappeared, 
and the lion came in its place." 

Here, also, side by side, are the ashes of the wives of these 
venerable men — women of whom the world was not worthy, 
and who, probably, had more to do with giving an imprint 
to the character of their posterity than the sires had. And 
here, too, are the children and children's children, making in 
all six generations bearing the same family name, and in the 
direct line of descent. 

That man is not to be admired who can stand in the 
midst of the graves of so many generations of his kindred 
without being the subject of strong emotions. If his an- 
cestors have been useful in their day, making the world 
wiser and better because they have lived in it, and have died 
leaving an example of industry, virtue and fidelity, he may 
well thank God for the blood that is in him. If of all the 
men who have preceded him in this line, and of those who 
have followed him, there has not been an unbeliever or a 
prodigal, he may well call the name of my great-grandfather 
and say " Ebenezer ;" which being interpreted is, " Hitherto 
hath the Lord helped us." 



THE OLD WHITE MEETING-HOUSE. 3 1 

THE OLD WHITE MEETING-HOUSE. 

SCENES OF CHILDHOOD REVISITED. 

We had no less than three generations in the party that 
drove across the country from Saratoga Springs to the Old 
White Meeting-house, in Cambridge, Washington County, 
N. Y. This gave peculiar zest and enjoyment to the journey 
and the visit, as we traversed a region that was familiar as 
home, was home indeed, more than sixty years ago. We 
shall find few if any of the friends of our childhood, but the 
hills are here, many of the old houses are just where they 
were, and to each one of them there is a story to which the 
second and third generation listen with rapt attention, while 
the head of the house recounts them, all of what he saw, and 
much of what he was. 

A Michigan divine recently visited this place, and in a let- 
ter to the public described the Old White Meeting-house as 
still standing, and doing some inglorious duty as a ware- 
house. My Michigan friend was not well posted in the his- 
tory of these classic fields, and I marvel greatly that he was 
so ill-taught by the present dwellers in this lovely valley. 
Had he consulted the chronicles of the " Old White Meeting- 
house," published forty years ago by Robert Carter & Broth- 
ers, New York, being the only veracious history of the valley, 
he would have learned that the house which was called by 
that name, and gave distinction to the corners on which it 
stood, has long since passed from the face of the earth, and 
has no more to show than any one of the Seven Churches of 
Asia. The one that is now standing on its site and has be- 
come a house of merchandise was the immediate successor 
of the Old White "Meeting-house, and when it became too 
strait for the people they built a larger one hard by, where 
they worship now. Thus in my time this venerable congre- 
gation has had three houses of worship, and the beautiful 
one in which they now meet is so large and comely that it 



32 IREN^US LETTERS. 

will probably satisfy all their wants for a generation or two 
to come. 

It stands as the old one did on the village green, with a 
grove of large trees in front. Every one of these trees has 
been planted since I was wont to lie on the grass and look 
up to the wondrously tall spire, on the very summit of which 
was a fish swimming in the breeze. We sent for the keys 
and entered the vestibule of this sacred place. By the side 
of the door was a tablet in the wall to the memory of Na- 
thaniel S. Prime, D.D., and above the tablet was suspended a 
portrait, an excellent likeness of him whom the people called 
pastor seventy years ago, and whom I called father then lor 
the first time. We were all tenderly affected by this memo- 
rial. On the other side of the door was a handsome tablet to 
the memory of the Rev. Dr. Newton, and another within the 
door to the Rev. Dr. Fillmore, who have in turn ministered 
to this people. They were able and excellent men, with 
many graces and gifts, which they faithfully used for the 
edification of the church. The interior may well serve as a 
model auditorium, so chaste and pleasing is its architecture, 
so convenient and appropriate, calling forth the exclamation 
of the sacred poet : 

" How decent and how wise, 
How comely to behold, 
Beyond the pomp that charms the eyes 
And rites adorned with gold." 

Across the way is the graveyard of the old church, where 
the forefathers sleep who rested from their labors before the 
new cemetery with exceeding taste and beauty was laid out, 
upon one of the hills overlooking the vale. As we entered 
this ancient " acre" the names on the tombstones were more 
familiar to me than anything else I had yet seen, and each 
one suggested some incident or peculiarity to rehearse to 
my companion of this walk among the tombs. " Why, 
grandfather," she remarked, "you seem to know everybody 
in the graveyard." It was even so. I found them all here, 
and not one of the congregation who called and welcomed 



THE OLD WHITE MEETING-HOUSE. 33 

my father to this charge is now among the living. As we 
picked our way among the graves, and read the inscriptions 
on the stones, it seemed the original of Gray's Elegy, and 
reminded me of Stoke Pogis and the venerable yew-trees, 
made ever green by those plaintive and incomparable lines. 

Directly in front of the new church, with the grove and 
green between, is the American Hotel, a four-story brick, 
with verandas, where we were nicely lodged and cared for, 
finding excellent rooms and beds, and comfortable table. It 
was an evidence of the progress of the age to find such a 
house, and one that can be reached by telephone from Al- 
bany or Saratoga. 

Yet it was with somewhat peculiar emotions that I passed 
a quiet night in the midst of a people that were for the most 
part strangers, in the place with which, of all places on earth, 
the young affections of my heart were most entwined. 
When morning came, we began a drive all over the town, to 
see the homes of the fathers and friends of my childhood. 
You are not to be treated to any sentimental reflections ; 
had you been in the carriage you would not have thought 
the memories were of the melancholy sort ; rather the re- 
verse, as the young people greeted every fresh incident and 
reminiscence with a merry peal. 

The meadow stream which flowed by the door of the first 
home of my boyhood was dried up ! I loved that brook 
more than anything else in Cambridge. Had all the hours 
I spent in catching trout in it been spent in hard study, who 
can say but that I would know something to-day .'' The house 
itself, one story high, with a long and wide piazza in front, 
and the study a wing on the end, had years ago been taken 
down and away, and so many more and greater buildings 
have been reared, it is impossible for me to point out the 
spot where it stood. The old academy in which I first 
learned to say A, B, C, is supplanted by a new and braver 
edifice of brick, though I could imagine the learned Scotch 
divine, Dr. Alexander Bullions, examining me in Greek and 
asking, " Well, Master Sawm, what part o' the verb is thot }" 
The village is so new, so " full of houses," that it has not a 

3 



-34 JRENMUS LETTERS. 

solitary place or object that looks like the past. No amount 
of recollection could stir one pleasurable sentiment associated 
with other days. We hastened out of the village into the 
country. The farms were there ; they are real estate ; they 
stay, and the homes in which the stalwart old farmers lived 
were unchanged, except as the lapse of more than half a cen- 
tury had given them more of age. But the sons and daugh- 
ters were thrifty, and the old places improve from year to 
year. 

One of them was famous for its orchard of cherries, and 
once a year, when the fruit was in perfection, it was a grand 
holiday for us parents and children to go out to Seymour 
King's and spend a long summer day in gathering them, re- 
turning home at night with baskets and pails full, which 
were made into preserves for the next winter's use. 

Another farmer, six miles away to the east, was Joseph 
Stewart, at whose place we all went every autumn when the 
nuts were ready to fall, and laid in a great store, walnuts, 
chestnuts and butternuts. This often occupied us two or 
three days and was considered the grandest frolic of the 
year. 

In similar work and play most pleasantly blended we 
gathered apples and indeed all the fruits of the year in their 
several seasons, making each visit a time of wonderful enjoy- 
ment for the good friends who invited us, and who gathered 
the neighbors to meet us and have a good time generally. 

This is the house where Daniel Wells, a soldier of the 
Revolution, held me a willing captive boy for at least a week 
every winter, while in the daytime he told me stories of the 
war and fought his battles over and over for my annual en- 
tertainment. In the evening in the large kitchen before the 
big blazing fire we popped corn, cracked nuts, made candy, 
and played all sorts of innocent, lively and noisy games, 
making the rafters ring with the merriment, while the old 
folks looked on and partook of the apples and cider which 
were then the best of good cheer. 

And so we rode over the whole country-side, enjoying the 
lovely weather, the brilliant autumn scenery, and stirring up 



DR. GRIFFIN'S COLIEGE BOYS. 35 

old memories long thought dead, but now fresh as yesterday 
as we passed the places that gave them birth. 

I met many gentlemen in the midst of business, and some 
who are now old men, who were the companions of my youth, 
now the pillars of the congregation, men and women who 
knew and honored my father as the pastor of their childhood-, 
their fathers and mothers are all dead and gone, but I lived 
among them as friends of my early days. At a little tea- 
party in the evening we met the Rev. Mr. Teller, the recently 
settled pastor, and his young wife, with both of whom we 
were greatly pleased, and we came away assured that the 
good people of the new White Meeting-house have a man 
eminently fitted to be a rich blessing to that important and 
most interesting congregation. " For them our prayers 
ascend." Very full of interest was this visit, and yet it is true 
that none can enter into its secret who have not known what 
it is to revisit the scenes of one's childhood after a lapse of 
many, many years. 



DR. GRIFFIN'S COLLEGE BOYS. 

A VERY few weeks after entering Williams College, I was 
invited by the President, Rev. Dr. Griffin, to come to his 
study at eight o'clock in the evening. Conscious of no 
specific wrong-doing, and scarcely known to him individually, 
I was at a loss to know why I had been asked to what seemed 
a private interview. But when the time came to put in an 
appearance, one and another of the students joined me, 
having had similar summons. As we reached the door, 
the company was increased to about a round dozen, and we 
entered with a feeling of apprehension, if not of positive 
fear. 

The President was the most majestic man I ever saw, and 
he then appeared more majestic than he would now. He 
received us with great kindness of manner, but with dignity 



36 IREN^US LETTERS. 

that filled us with veneration and awe. He was more than 
six feet high, and of such proportions as to make him a 
giant among men. There is no man in the American pulpit 
of this day of his commanding presence, of whom I have 
knowledge. His pulpit eloquence was then so remarkable 
that he was called the Prince of Preachers. His stature was 
so great, his walk so like that of a military commander, — 
proud of his position and anxious to appear great, — that we 
who were very younrj felt the mighty distance between us 
and him. With this sense of his greatness and our littleness, 
we entered his study. A bright wood-fire burned on the 
brass andirons. His study-lamp was too much for his eyes, 
which were protected with a green shade. This he removed 
as he turned toward us, seated in a half-circle around the 
room. As he wheeled about in his chair, he sat in the 
midst of us, as a father surrounded by his children. And 
then he spoke. With exceeding tenderness in his tones, 
and words of loving-kindness on his lips, he said he had in- 
vited us, out of all the students who had recently entered 
college, because our parents were his personal friends. As 
many of us had not recovered from the first attack of home- 
sickness, this allusion to the old folks at home took us where 
we were tender. In an instant he had not our ear only, but 
our hearts. He then went on to say that all our parents 
were praying for us, and anxious lest in the new life we had 
begun we should be led away from the lessons and the loves 
of our childhood, and be tempted into evil ways. He set 
before us in eloquent and impressive words the importance 
of seeking earnestly the Lord, giving our hearts and lives to 
him now at the very outset of our college career ; the dan- 
ger of delay ; and then he unfolded with great clearness the 
way of life by Jesus Christ. He conversed with each one of 
the twelve in the hearing of the rest, inquiring minutely into 
our plans and purposes with reference to religious duties, 
and gave such instruction as each case required. Then he 
prayed with us, — fervid, importunate, mighty with God ; 
wrestling as Jacob with the angel ; and so full of love and 
pity, himself in tears, and moving us to tears in sympathy. 



DR. GRIFFIN'S COLLEGE BOYS. 37 

as he prayed for those we loved at home, and for us who felt 
as orphans or as exiles, — who were now finding a father and 
friend. Then he told us to come to him at any hour of the 
day or night with whatever trouble or care we had, and his 
door and heart would be always open for us to enter. 

That was the beginning of what in those days was called 
a revival of religion. Not one of the dozen boys (men they 
are called now — college men) had a serious thought about 
"getting religion" when we went to the President's study. 
But we all came away under the deep conviction that the 
one thing needful for us was to have religion. And of that 
number several were hopefully converted during the winter, 
and a general seriousness pervaded the college. The most 
of those who professed to be saved at that time were the 
children of pious parents. They had been well taught at 
home, and now parental prayers were answered, the seed 
planted in much tearfulness springing up to eternal life. 

At that time there were in college several very wild young 
men, whose parents, as a forlorn hope, sent them there that 
they might be brought under the power of religion. They 
were not touched by the Spirit. They scoffed at those who 
were serious. They blasphemed openly, and many other 
dear youth were seduced by them into sin and shame. 
These profligates went on from bad to worse, became 
hardened in iniquity, and tenfold more the children of 
the devil than they were before. As if God had said of 
them: "Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone." And 
all of them went to the bad. On that set of dissipated, pro- 
fane and rowdy fellows, the discipline, instruction and in- 
fluence of college life were powerless for good. Most of 
them died early. Some lived to bring their parents with sor- 
row to the grave, and then perished. 

A college in which religion is a living force is a good place 
for Christian parents to send their children. The tempta- 
tions to evil are not greater than they are in any city or vil- 
lage, nor in most rubral parishes. The restraints are greater. 
The hourly influences of good are strong. Prayer at home is 
a power in the college. The sweet associations of the family 



38 IREN^US LETTERS. 

circle and altar are not lost from memory in the midst of 
study or play. The probabilities are all in favor of a young 
man who goes to college with good principles. He will 
probably come out with firmer convictions of truth and 
duty, perhaps with new purposes and holier aims. 

But it must be a college where evangelical religion is the 
supreme power. The spirit of unbelief, the scepticism of 
infidelity, — I mean just that, the scepticism of infidelity : the 
religion of doubt — that agnosticism or know-nothingism now 
prevailing in circles where philosophy asserts itself against 
revelation, — is dangerous to the everlasting souls of young 
men. The atmosphere of such a college is foul. No system 
of ventilation will improve it. Send a son to the swamps to 
cure him of malarial fever ; to jail to mend his morals ; to 
the desert of Arabia to grow corn, before you send him to 
such a college to learn to do well. The fear of the Lord is 
the beginning of wisdom. And those colleges which ignore 
the gospel as the power and wisdom of God, are not the 
places where the sons of godly parents should go for knowl- 
edge of the Truth. 



RETURNING AFTER FIFTY YEARS. 

The first Chief Justice of the United States was John Jay, 
of Bedford, Westchester County, N. Y. He was a large 
landed proprietor there, and on a height commanding one of 
the finest inland views in the country he built a spacious 
mansion, in which he died in 1829. He has a reputation as 
a patriot and statesman of the Revolution second only to 
that of Washington. His son William Jay, a distinguished 
Christian, philanthropist and jurist, succeeded his illustrious 
father in the enjoyment of this magnificent estate. I 
frequently met him in Bible and other meetings when I 
was a young man. He died in this ancestral house in 1858, 
and was succeeded by our honored fellow-citizen, John Jay, 



RETURNING AFTER FIFTY YEARS. 39 

recently Minister to Austria, and now President of the Uni- 
ted States Evangelical Alliance. 

In the year 1833, and in the month of October, I was li- 
censed to preach the gospel, and was invited by the Rev. 
Jacob Green, pastor of the Bedford Church, to preach in his 
pulpit on the Sabbath following my licensure. This is one 
of the oldest Presbyterian churches in America. Two years 
ago we celebrated the two hundrcth anniversary of its birth. 
At that time it was arranged that I would come there on the 
completion of my fiftieth year in the ministry, and recount 
the experiences of the half-century. It came around this 
month, and on Saturday afternoon I went up there. It is 
only about thirty miles from the city. Mr. John Jay met me 
at the station, and after a drive of three miles we entered 
the park, and through wooded lawns and wide and beautiful 
fields we reached the old mansion. Mr. Jay had kindly in- 
vited the ministers of the Episcopal and Presbyterian 
churches and their wives, and several other gentlemen and 
ladies, to meet there at dinner, and a delightful evening was 
passed, rendered perhaps the more enjoyable by the storm 
that was raging without. Everything in this venerable house 
is in the elegant style of the olden time, some of the furrti- 
ture being presented to the first Chief Justice from the halls 
of the Continental Congress. 

Sunday morning broke upon us with the light of a bril- 
liant October Sabbath sun : as if heaven had come down to 
earth. As we drove through the maple-groves on our way 
to church the trees seemed clothed with golden leaves, and 
the ground covered with cloth of gold. The sadness of fall 
was chased away by the bright shining after the rain, and the 
holy Sabbath was "the bridal of the earth and sky." 

The church in which I preached my first sermon had been 
removed, and a more spacious and beautiful house erected 
and freely given to the congregation by Francis A. Palm- 
er, Esq., President of the Broadway Bank, New York. As 
we approached it the people were coming in wagons, car- 
riages, buggies and on foot from all directions. The house 
was filled with friends who had come from this and the sur- 



40 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

rounding towns and villages. Some greeted me from South 
Salem, Katonah, Mount Kisco, Poundridge, Hopewell; even 
over the Connecticut line, they had come from Stamford, 
New Canaan and Greenwich, and I know not how many- 
other places. Among them were some who had been pres- 
ent fifty years ago and heard the boy's first sermon. One of 
them said he remembered the text, and he repeated it without 
hesitation. Of course all those who were heads of the con- 
gregation then are in another congregation now. But Mrs. 
Green who sat by my mother's side on that day, in front of 
the pulpit, died only a year or two ago. All the ministers 
and elders who united in clothing me with the right to 
preach are ministering spirits now. But the children of that 
day are the elders, and have taken the places of their parents 
in the church on earth. 

To such an assembly it was my strange privilege and pleas- 
ure to speak. It was natural to begin with an apology for 
being so young when preaching a semi-centennial, and the 
excuse or justification is that I was so very young when I 
preached the first time. Not many begin to preach before 
they are legally entitled to vote. But I did. And as I en- 
tered the ministry in 1833, it is obvious to any intelligent and 
reflecting person that the subsequent years, until the present, 
have been among the most interesting and eventful since the 
death of Christ. These events were passed rapidly in re- 
view, and as they were called to stand for a moment to be 
viewed in the light of truth and history, it seemed to be 
a glorious privilege to live in such a century and to have a 
part, however humble and obscure, in the progress of such 
an age. The revolutions abroad and at home, the rise 
and fall of governments and parties, the progress of the 
church, its divisions and reunions, the triumphs of the gos- 
pel in our own and foreign lands, the mighty movements in 
the world of science and art, with their wonderful inven- 
tions and discoveries — these and other themes were ob- 
viously to be considered. But to touch them singly in an 
hour was nearly impossible, and they could be thrown on 
the curtain of the mind for an instant only, before a new 



RETURNING AFTER FIFTY YEARS. 4I 

picture came into view. When the panorama had passed 
and I came down from the desk, these friends, old and 
young and new, gathered around, and a lively scene of con- 
gratulation followed. The excellent pastor, Rev. J. H. Hoyt, 
earnest, able and much esteemed, presented them to me one 
by one, and nearly all assured me they had known me from 
their earliest childhood ; and as some of them were not 
young, it served to help me to a consciousness of the flight 
of time. One of my friends, Mr. A. Williamson, formerly a 
classical instructor in the village, carried me to his house, 
where two sons and six daughters, and now the grandchil- 
dren, are like pillars and polished corner-stones of a well- 
ordered household, whose God is the Lord. After dinner 
the sons drove with me off into the country to the old 
church, the identical one in which I first preached, which 
Mr. Palmer, who gave the new one, removed to this more 
rural region, and here union services are maintained. The 
same pulpit and pews are here, and we held a brief service, a 
memorial service, in which I said a few words, and we sang 
hymns of praise. In the evening the village church was 
again opened, and hearers from the Episcopal, the Baptist 
and the Methodist congregations assembled with the Presby- 
terians, and Mr. Palmer and the pastor addressed them, and 
once more, the third time, I sought to say some things that 
might do them good. And now at the close of this service 
Mr. John G. Clark, an elder of the church, and son of Elder 
John Clark with whom I was lodged long time ago, took me 
in his carriage with his wife and Mr. Mead of Greenwich 
Conn., and carried me a mile and a half into the country 
to his house, the same one in which his father and grand- 
father lived before him. We gathered the household for 
evening prayers, and talked of all the ways by which God 
had led our fathers. Then Mr. and Mrs. Clark led me 
up- stairs, and into the same bedchamber where I slept fifty 
years ago, and there committed me to the tender care of 
Him who giveth his beloved sleep. 

It had been a day of as much physical and mental labor 
and spiritual excitement as any day of the half-century past. 



42 IREN^US LETTERS. 

And I was glad to say, " Now I lay me down to sleep," which 
I did in a chamber of imagery, where the visions of other 
days, of " parents passed into the skies," of bright and some- 
times troubled scenes of a busy lifetime, shone in the dark- 
ness on the wall. 

The next morning was crisp, frosty and cheery. Some of 
the good neighbors called, among them Mrs. Heroy, widow 
of their late beloved pastor, and then Mr. Clark drove with 
Mr. Mead and me across the country at a brisk and glowing 
pace, every pulse bounding in the exhilarating air, the hills 
and valleys clothed in royal purple and gold, till we reached 
the station at Mount Kisco, where I took the rail at 9 A.M., 
and returned to the city. 



HALLOWING THE FIFTIETH YEAR. 

In the autumn of the year 1834 I came to the village of 
Ballston Spa, in the towns of Ballston and Milton, in Sara- 
toga County. State of New York. A young stranger, I 
sought the house of one to whom I had a letter of introduc- 
tion, and the result was an engagement to preach six months 
on a salary at the rate of five hundred dollars a year. Be- 
fore the half-year expired the people gave me a call, and I 
was ordained and settled as their pastor in the month of 
June, 1835. The church itself was organized a few weeks 
only before I came, and it was therefore convenient and 
appropriate to hallow the fiftieth year after its formation and 
after my ordination at the same time. And that has brought 
me away earlier than usual from the city into the delicious 
atmosphere of this rural region. 

Mine was a short pastorate. One brief year of labor and 
I was laid aside. And this suggests a caution to young min- 
isters and their people. In the zeal of their youth, the fresh 
pastor rushes upon his work as though he were not, in part 
at least, made of flesh. Conscious of great vitality, and un- 



HALLOWING THE FIFTIETH YEAR. 43 

taught by experience, he is ready to preach whenever he has 
a cliance, as if there were no limit to his powers of endur- 
ance. His people, delighted with his ardor, energy and will- 
ingness, multiply opportunities and invite him more and 
more abundantly. The more he does the more they want him 
to do. I once said to a congregation, " You are very unkind 
to your young pastor." They were hurt by the charge, and 
wanted an explanation, which they received in such words 
as these: "You are so much interested in his work that you 
call upon him for labors far beyond his strength, and you will 
soon break him down, perhaps kill him, and his blood will 
be required at your hands." They did crush him, and would 
have put him to death out of sheer love and thoughtless- 
ness, but he fled while he had strength to go, and they 
saw his face and heard his voice no more. It was very 
much that way with me and my people. It is always cold, 
very cold, in winter up here in Saratoga County. Take one 
day's work as a sample of many. The mercury stood in 
the morning twenty-eight degrees below zero, and did not 
rise more than ten or fifteen degrees during the day. At 
ten o'clock in the morning one of the elders called for me 
with an open cutter [a one-horse sleigh], and we went from 
house to house among the farmers, making pastoral visits. 
We made them short, to get over as much ground as pos- 
sible. Before I was fairly thawed in one house we put out 
into the biting frost again and drove to another, sometimes 
taken into the kitchen, where the big fireplace was a comfort- 
able spot for a half-frozen man, sometimes taken into the 
best room, where there had been no fire at all ; and so we 
worked through the day, taking dinner at one house, tea at 
another, and fetching up in the evening at " Factory Village 
School-house," where I preached to a packed congregation, 
steaming with the heat of a red-hot cast-iron stove. At ten 
o'clock I reached home, after twelve hours' incessant talk- 
ing, under the worst possible circumstances for the preser- 
vation of health, the most favorable to throat and lung dis- 
ease. Such excursions were frequent. The same elder was 
my usual attendant; I always went at his invitation, and he 



44 IREN^US LETTERS. 

came for me so often that I had to say he was the most in- 
correctly named of any man in the eldership, for he was 
Henry Doolittle. 

How long could a young man, of slender build and deli- 
cate lungs, expect to hold out who preached three times 
every Sabbath, and held two or three meetings in the week, 
and made such pastoral visits in a congregation scattered 
four or five miles in every direction ? It was miserable 
economy of life and health. And the pastor and people 
were equally at fault in the matter. They asked and he did 
not refuse. Every Sabbath evening, after two full services, 
the men in the village would get up a team, sometimes two 
or three teams, and carry me off four or five miles into the 
country, where notice had been given of preaching in a 
school-house, and there we would have an earnest meeting, 
in which the laymen participated while I did the speaking. 
Sometimes I lodged among the farmers on Sunday night, 
but more frequently rode home in the cold after a steam- 
bath in the crowded school-room. 

Elder David Cory gave me a hint about subjects for ser- 
mons that has been of use to me ever since. He was 
giving me his company and a ride to the County Poor- 
house, where I was to preach, I said : " It is about time 
for me to get a text ; how would this do — ' To the poor the 
gospel is preached ' .''" Mr. Cory thought a moment, and 
said: "Yes, very well, very well; but I think it is hard 
enough to be poor without being told of it." I saw the 
point, and preached to them without the most distant allu- 
sion to my audience as paupers, but only as saints and 
sinners for whom the riches of grace were freely provided. 

To come back to this field after fifty years was intensely 
interesting. I could not expect to find many of those among 
the living to whom I had preached half a century ago, but 
it was wonderful to me to find so few above the ground. The 
present excellent pastor, the Rev. A. R. Oiney, received me 
with the greatest kindness, and we sat down to look over 
the records of the church and see the names of the dead and 
the living. They were carefully registered and numbered in 



HALLOWING THE FIFTIETH YEAR. 45 

a manner that might well be copied by all clerks of congre- 
gations. The number, the name in full, the date of admis- 
sion, of dismission, or death or removal, and to what place 
or church, the change of name of any by marriage, and re- 
marks — these stretched across two pages of the register, and 
made a complete record that would often be of great service. 
Then the minutes of the church were so full and careful that 
they left nothing to be wanted. As we read over the names 
of the original sixty-six who composed the church at its 
organization, an incident, and sometimes many, came up in 
memory, and it was a pleasure to rehearse them in the hear- 
ing of one who now ministers to the children and grand- 
children of those who were my parishioners. 

In one case the record ran thus : " was ex- 
amined and ordered to be admitted to the communion on 
the next Lord's day, but she died before the Sabbath came." 

I recalled the occurrence. She was dying of consump- 
tion. With the elders of the church I visited her in her 
sick -chamber. She expressed a strong desire to be received 
into the communion of the church ; and, as she would not be 
able to go, we agreed to come and administer the sacrament 
at the close of the public service on the Sabbath. A day 
or two afterwards I was sitting by her bedside, talking to her 
of Jesus and his undying love, of heaven and the Saviour 
there. She was looking at me with large, wide-open eyes, 
and being too feeble to converse she listened only, while I 
spoke softly of the joy that was set before her. And when 
I put to her a question to which she might respond by a 
look or a word, I found that she was dead, and probably had 
been dead for some minutes while I had been speaking. So 
gently had the spirit passed away. 

And of all the sixty-six hwX. four are among the living 
now. Three of them were present the next day when I 
preached the sermon on the fiftieth anniversary of my or- 
dination and settlement as their pastor ! It was a day of in- 
tense interest to me, as it brought in review the great events 
of the last fifty years in the history of the church, the state 
and the world. And it may be that you would be interested 



46 IREN^US LETTERS. 

in some of the recollections awakened by this review. At 
any rate, as this letter closes at the beginning of the record, 
I will go on with it, unless something of more immediate in- 
terest occurs to require our attention. 



SOME CHANGES IN FIFTY YEARS. 

It is not given to many pastors to come back after fifty 
years' absence to visit the scene of their early labors. One 
who has that opportunity must expect to find himself a 
stranger at home. It is home because the face of nature is 
familiar. The fields and hills, the lakes and rivers have not 
so changed as to be unknown when he sees them again. 
But the people that knew him once are not around him now. 
He meets none in the street to greet him with an old-time 
smile. The children would be past middle life if they were 
living, and for the most part gone to parts unknown. 

When I arranged to come back to my first pastoral charge 
on the fiftieth anniversary of my ordination, it was with a 
kind of feeling that I was to meet the old people again. 
Many of them I well knew were dead ; many had removed 
to other places. But still it was the same congregation 
nominally, and the succession of names and families would 
doubtless preserve its identity. But you cannot understand 
the peculiar sensations with which I looked upon the assem- 
bly, with but here and there one familiar face. And when I 
spoke to them it was as though I must speak so as to be 
heard in the other world, if my words were to reach the ears 
that heard me half a century ago. Who are these whose 
faces are upturned to me now ? The most of them have 
come here to reside since I left the place, and they have no 
kindred here to whom I ministered in the days of my youth. 
And I may speak never so loudly, and cry, " Where are they .?" 
but no answering voice will come back to say, " We are with- 
in the veil and are listening to you yet again." No, they 



SOME CHANGES IN FIFTY YEARS. 47 

will not speak, and we do not know, and I do not suppose, 
that they hear the voices in which they once rejoiced. 
It is vain to speculate on lines that are hid in the mystery 
of the unseen and eternal, and on which the book of God is 
silent. But you will not know, unless you place yourself in 
similar surroundings, how strange the feeling is to speak to 
your old congregation with scarcely any of them to hear. 

A few linger on the stage. They are about my age : some a 
few years older ; others younger ; but they are all so changed 
that I would know very few were I to meet them elsewhere. 
We are taught that the body undergoes a total change of its 
atoms once in seven years ; and if that be so, all these surviv- 
ors have had their bodies renewed seven times since I first 
saw them. It is not to be wondered at that they are quite 
different now. And when one steps up to me and mentions 
his name as one very familiar in former times, my first 
thought is to exclaim, " Is it possible !" But this would not 
be the thing to say, and I make it, "Well, w^are growing 
old." No one can deny that proposition. Though the hair 
be not as snow and the feeble hands and knees do not shake 
with the infirmities of years, though the eyes be not dark- 
ened nor the ears deaf to the voice of friends, yet the signs 
of advancing years are not to be mistaken. It is safe to say, 
" We are growing old." And the question of Pharaoh, 
" How old art thou .''" is the one that we would first ask. 
Jacob was one hundred and thirty years old when the king 
put it to him, and he thought his days were few when he had 
reached that great age. Many of us have lived little more 
than half that time and will hardly admit that the days of 
our years have been few. We shall none of us make a pil- 
grimage as long as Jacob's, and probably none of us wish to. 

THE PASTORS. 

If the congregation which I served in my young life had 
nearly all died before I returned to hallow the fiftieth year, 
the pastors w'ho have fed this flock ever since are all living. 
As there have been ten pastors duly installed, it is certainly 
remarkable that not one of them has yet been removed by 



48 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

death. The present able and worthy pastor, the Rev. A. R. 
Olney, had taken great care to gather the facts in the history 
of the church which he furnished to me for my use on the 
occasion. He had obtained letters from all but one of the 
former pastors, which were read in the midst of the sermon. 
My immediate successor was the Rev. A. T. Chester, D.D., 
of Buffalo, who was with me in the pulpit now, and preached 
with great ability in the evening to an overflowing assembly. 
His natural force is not abated. The Rev. Daniel Stewart, 
now of Albany, Rev. George S. Todd, and Rev. Richard S. 
Steele, D.D., now of Ann Arbor, Michigan, followed in 
this order. The letter of Dr. Steele was rich in reminis- 
cences of his life and labors among this people, to whom he 
was warmly attached. After him came the Rev. N. B. Klink, 
now in California; then the Rev. David Tully, now pastor 
in Oswego, N. Y. After him was Rev. Stephen Mattoon, 
lately the President of Biddle University in North Carolina; 
then the Rev. Samuel A. Hayt, now pastor in Watertown, 
N. y., and the Rev. David Murdock, now of Peekskill, N. Y., 
preceded the present pastor. The Rev. Nathaniel S. Prime, 
D.D., was the stated supply of the church in 1847-49, about 
two years and a half, and he is the only one of its ministers 
yet permitted to rest from his labors. Several of these men 
have become distinguished servants of God, and have won 
a good report by faithfulness in their several fields. If these 
lines should meet their eyes, let them know that their names 
were heard with lively interest, and that they are held in 
grateful remembrance by those of the people who yet sur- 
vive. 

Fifty years ! And these last fifty years : in the midst of the 
nineteenth century: more crowded with incident than any 
preceding period of the same length in modern annals. 
The arts and sciences have marked epochs as wonderful as 
the discovery of a new continent, or the invention of print- 
ing. The angel with the gospel has been flying through the 
world, and the nations have heard the voice. With all the 
boasting of unbelief there is less infidelity and more faith on 
the earth than there was when this century began its course. 



HOW TIVO CENTS BUILT A CHURCH. 49 

There is no ground for apprehension that the truth is losing 
friends or gaining foes. This is the view that I took of the 
subject when reciting a brief summary of events that have 
marked the fifty years since my ordination. During nearly 
the whole of those years it has been my business to watch 
with constant attention the march of truth in the earth, and 
to take some small part in the conflicts of opinion that have 
shaken the moral and religious world of thought. There 
have been times when the enemy was so noisy and jubilant 
as to disturb the surface of society. But the great deep has 
been serene. The foundation stands sure. And I have a 
strong impression that when another half-century has com- 
pleted its course, its history will be as brilliant and full of 
fruit to the praise of God as the one has been that is now 
sealed for eternity. 



HOW TWO CENTS BUILT A CHURCH. 

Thirty years ago I told this story in one of my letters. 
A generation has passed by, and I repeat it, for the moral of 
it is quite as timely as it was then. 

My first settlement was in Ballston Spa, N. Y., where a 
congregation had been recently organized, and was worship- 
ping God in the County Court-house. When Presbytery 
met for my ordination, the Rev. Dr. Kirk, then of Albany, 
afterwards of Boston, preaching the sermon, it was com- 
mended to all its churches that they should take collections 
to assist this new congregation to build a church. I was 
furnished with a copy of this resolution, and was advised to 
make a pilgrimage from place to place, till I had presented 
the claims of the infant organization and received contribu- 
tions. Our people then assembled, and first tried to see how 
much they could raise among themselves. There was not a 
rich man, as we count money now, among them. The rich- 
est man was an old bachelor farmer, and burdened with a 
4 



50 IREN^US LETTERS. 

bodily infirmity. He subscribed three hundred dollars, and 
no one else gave more than two hundred dollars, but the do- 
nations were so many that one half the required sum was 
pledged on the spot. 

Now was the time for me to go forth and raise the remain- 
der by appealing to the neighboring churches. With great 
care I prepared a sermon, showing by undeniable facts and 
arguments that our cause was the most important that ever 
sought the aid of good people ; that a church was impera- 
tively demanded at this point; that other denominations 
were rapidly growing up in the village ; that our people had 
done all they possibly could afford to do, and unless help 
came speedily from outside the thing would be a failure, dis- 
graceful and disastrous. This was followed by an appeal that 
was meant to stir the heart under the ribs of the stingiest, 
and to make the gold and silver leap out of the pocket into 
the plate. Having armed myself with this " eloquent " dis- 
course, I selected the church in Johnstown, Montgomery 
County, N. Y.,as the largest and wealthiest rural congrega- 
tion in our connection. It was some thirty miles away, and 
I had to drive the whole distance on Saturday across the 
countty. Elder Mix entertained me with great kindness, and 
told me many pleasant things of old Dr. Mairs, the former 
pastor. 

The congregation was large and solid-looking. They were 
chiefly farmers and their families, and the sight of them was 
refreshing. I preached my first sermon in view of a collec- 
tion : I do not call it a begging sermon, for it was addressed 
to the judgment of the people, with a drive at their feelings 
in the end of it. When it was over I was very anxious for 
the result. The pulpit being of the old tub pattern, I could 
sit at the side, and, resting head on hand, look down and see 
the streams of benevolence flow into the plates as they were 
passed into the pews. In the slip in front of the pulpit sat a 
stout and well-conditioned father of a family with him, and, 
opening his hand over the plate, he dropped upon it a large 
copper cent, one of the old-time coins not yet wholly ex- 
tinct. It fell like a lump of ice on my glowing heart. The 



HOW TWO CENTS BUILT A CHURCH. 5 I 

plate was passed to the next pew, where sat another well-to- 
do Christian citizen, looking as if he were rich, increased in 
goods and had need of nothing. He put forth his hand, 
and with painful reluctance, as if he hated to part with his 
earthly treasures, dropped into the plate a huge copper cent, 
which lay by the side of the first, both coppers staring up 
into my face in the pulpit. A cold chill smote me. I with- 
drew my gaze from things below, and felt certain that my 
cause was lost. Elder Mix told me at noon that the collec- 
tion amounted to eleven dollars ! Covered with mortifica- 
tion and confusion of face, I journeyed home the next day, 
piling up resolutions to keep my own vineyard as well as I 
could, and never to go again to another place to ask money 
for our new church. A meeting of the congregation was 
speedily called. I made my report, stating the facts as they 
have here been related, and I closed by saying : " And now, 
brethren, if there is any more begging done, you will do it; 
my work is here, and my duty is to preach to you, not to the 
churches scattered abroad." 

To my great gratification they said they would see what 
more they could do among themselves. Then he who had 
given three hundred sat down quickly and wrote one hun- 
dred and fifty more, and he who had given two hundred add- 
ed one hundred to his subscription ; and it came to pass that 
in this way, each one giving one half more, the third quarter 
of the required sum was raised. The house was built and 
dedicated, and when the seats were sold the fourth quarter 
was received, and the church was paid for! To my knowl- 
edge nothing was received from abroad. Some of the people 
may have had friends who sent them something, but I be- 
lieve the whole was raised by the cheerful, self-denying offer- 
ings of the people themselves. It is not within my knowl- 
edge that one of them ever felt poorer for what he had done, 
or had a feeling of regret. The church stands on the hill in 
the village to-day, — Rev. A. R. Olney is the excellent and 
successful pastor, — and when you are going to Saratoga and 
the train stops at Ballston, look out of the window on the 
right hand and you will see a solid brick church with a tall 



52 IREN^US LETTERS. 

spire, very near the station. The large, square building op- 
posite is the Court-house in which the infant enterprise was 
cradled, and in which I received ordination " by the laying 
on of the hands of the Presbytery." 

That is the story to show you how two cents built a church. 
It is quite probable that the congregation would have been 
encouraged to keep on begging abroad if I had raised a hun- 
dred dollars that day. And if they had kept on, they would 
have failed and have gone into debt or abandoned the work. 
Therefore I thank those good men who contributed a cop- 
per apiece. They gave according to their views of their 
duty. And in my humble judgment they were right. No 
obligation was on them to build a church in Ballston. And 
when the Ballston people saw that others would not help 
them they just helped themselves, and the Lord is the helper 
of all such, in all times and places. There is no better friend 
than He, and next to Him your best friend is yourself. 

It is not unlikely that many of my readers are heartily 
tired of this reiteration on my part of the duty of self-help. 
Some remonstrate with me, and say that it discourages char- 
ity and shelters selfishness. It doth not appear so to me. 
The luxury of giving is not enjoyed until you give clear 
down to where you feel it. And when you do that you have 
usually given all that is needed. And there is exquisite de- 
light in doing a good thing yourself, without being boosted 
by strangers. God loves to be admired by his saints, and 
there is no sin in that holy glow of joyful emotion the soul 
feels when useful results have followed our giving and doing. 
The chief end of man is in that glow. It is glorifying and 
enjoying God, who is in us, to will and do his pleasure. 
Blessed are they who do his will : giving themselves and 
their possessions to Him who died for us and rose again. To 
his name be praise. 



BURNING UP OLD SERMONS. 53 



BURNING UP OLD SERMONS. 

The Rev. Dr. Duryea, of Boston, was, a few years since, a 
very popular and greatly beloved pastor in this city, and 
then in Brooklyn. A few weeks ago he delivered a lecture 
before the Boston Ministers' Meeting on the relation of 
"self-culture" to the "sermon." It fills some six columns 
in the Congrcgationalist, and that paper well says the reader 
will wish there were more when he has read it. Having 
forcibly defined the ways and means by which the preacher 
will keep his faculties ever bright and active, so that he may 
bring fresh material into the pulpit. Dr. Duiyea reaches the 
climax and conclusion of the whole matter in this the final 
passage of his eloquent discourse : 

" I have often sat down beside the heroic majesty of old 
Dr. Prime, father of the senior Editors of the New York Ob- 
server. He took his barrel into the back-yard, made a bon- 
fire, and slowly and deliberately put one sermon after an- 
other into the flames and watched them curl up, until he 
sang the doxologyover the ashes !" (Laughter and applause.) 
" Depend upon it, brethren, the ' dead line ' of fifty is the lazy 
line." (Applause.) 

This fact in the private life of my honored father was al- 
ways well known to his children, who heard him mention it 
often to his brethren in the ministry. But I had not sup- 
posed Dr. Duryea to be familiar with it. To have the fact 
thus improved as an example and illustration by such a 
preacher as Dr. Duryea, in such a city as Boston, and before 
Boston ministers, is personally exceedingly gratifying. It is 
also another proof that deeds live, though men die. My 
father little thought when, in a retired rural parish in the 
northern part of the State of New York, he, a young man, 
was burning up a lot of old sermons in the back-yard of his 
house, that the deed would point a moral in the climax of a 
concio ad clerutn of Boston, twenty-five years after his de- 
cease. When I read Dr. Duryea's allusion, it occurred to me 



54 IREN^US LETTERS. 

that in my father's sermon on the fiftieth anniversary of his 
ministry he would probably have mentioned the circum- 
stance. Turning to the manuscript, I find it written : 

" Being now settled in Cambridge, Washington County, 
N. Y., and twenty-eight years old, on a competent salary " (it 
was six hundred dollars, and he had a wife and three children), 
"and with a large charge extending six or seven miles in 
every direction, I felt the importance of setting myself 
down to study. And yet from the strong desire of the peo- 
ple to see their new minister, and my own wish to become 
acquainted with them, I was induced to spend much time in 
visiting. After pursuing this course for three or four 
months, relying on my old stock, I found I had economized 
time to write only two sermons. Under the deep conviction 
that this would not answer, I performed an act which, from the 
benefits resulting, I can recommend to every young minister 
upon changing his field of labor. Taking out all my old 
sermons, — now amounting to three hundred and fifty, — and 
selecting about a score as specimens of my early sermon- 
izing, I made a bonfire of the residue. It was the noblest 
act on my own behalf I ever performed ; and, I presume, no 
loss to any one ; and the process of burning gave more light 
than the most of the material had ever done before. Young 
men may be slow to believe it, but one of the best ways to 
convert poor sermons into good ones is to commit the old 
ones to the flames. I am so fully convinced of the advan- 
tage that I have repeated the experiment several times 
since, and calculate to do it again. I thus placed myself 
under the necessity of spending three or four days each week 
in my study, as I had determined not to be a sluggard in the 
Lord's vineyard." 

The term heroic, which Dr. Duryea applies to the man 
who made this holocaust of his sermons, was well applied ; 
but even more was it fitting to that persevering life-work 
through which he never ceased from his labors, his mind 
kept fresh and vigorous by its genial exercise, and abreast of 
the age by large reading, polishing his intellect by the dis- 
cipline of daily writing. He would write and rewrite a ser- 



BURNING UP OLD SERMONS. 55 

mon, and write it again. When he had no pastoral charge, 
and there was less need of his preparing a new discourse, it 
was his pleasure to take a text on which he had never writ- 
ten, and build on it a fresh discourse in no respect inferior to 
those of his early manhood. He brought forth fruit in his 
old age. He spoke and wrote with the same energy at sev- 
enty as at forty. And he kept up this practice to the day 
of his death. He was writing, in the evening, one more 
sermon : the theme was the Love of God. He had advanced 
into the middle of the discourse, and then quoting these 
words, " He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God 
in him," he laid down his pen and went to bed. The angels 
came for him, and when he fell asleep they bore his spirit to 
the bosom of Him whose love he celebrated with the last 
effort of his mind and pen. 

Dr. Duryea has done nothing better fitted to be useful in 
the world of Christian work than by giving counsel to his 
brethren to be always moving on and up in the study and 
outgiving of God's truth. There is no such thing as perfec- 
tion in any art or science: what is well done can be done 
better. And he who rests content with what he has done 
will soon find that he loses what he hath ; the very ability of 
doing well will fail him unless he tries to do better. It is 
not so in the ministry only ; it is the same in every profess- 
ion and business. 

Nearly forty years ago I stumbled upon this sentence by 
Ferguson : " The lustre which a man casts around him, like 
the flame of a meteor, shines only when his motion con- 
tinues. The moments of rest and obscurity are the same." 
I copied the remark, committed it to memory, repeated it 
over and over again, and tried to get it into the warp and 
woof of the mind. " Shines only when in motion :" it was a 
spur and stimulus to ceaseless labor to do better. " Rest 
and obscurity " are twins. In tliis day, of all days, unceasing 
effort is the price of success. Never a day without some 
thing learned. Never a day without something done. 

The lawyer or the physician who imagines himself perfect 
in the art and science of law or medicine soon sees, to 



$6 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

his dismay, the world going ahead and leaving him with 
abundant leisure and few clients. The professor in college 
or seminary who, having composed his formal lectures, 
thinks he is now able to take his ease, becomes prosy, te- 
dious, intolerable ; his resignation is ardently desired and his 
death not particularly lamented. Many pastors are amazed 
at the decline of interest evident in their preaching : they 
preach the same sermons they wrote thirty years ago, but 
the people do not enjoy them. They are crowded out of 
their pulpits by an " ungrateful " people who have itching 
ears and want a younger man. Often (not always) the fault 
is with the preacher himself. He did not grow old grace- 
fully. If his heart is young, he should flourish in his old age 
like a green bay-tree : rejoicing in the Lord and his friends ; 
mingling with the young and entering into their innocent 
pursuits as he himself did when a young man. Above all 
things he must keep his mind bright and burning by friction 
with the mind of the age. His piety mellowed in the declin- 
ing sunlight ; his intellect filled with the ripe, rich fruit of life's 
harvest ; his vigor preserved by temperance and exercise, 
his bow abides in strength. Confidence, a plant of slow 
growth, has become his strong support in the hearts of his 
people. Their love has turned into veneration. The chil- 
dren " pluck his gown " and put their little hands into his. 
The pastor becomes the patriarch and prophet. " He points 
to heaven and leads the way." 

Dr. Duryea's counsels, honestly followed, would make long 
pastorates, filled with usefulness and crowned with honor. 
My best wish for him (and it is a prophecy) is that his chil- 
dren may live to hear him spoken of, twenty-five years after 
his death, in such grand words as it has pleased him to 
speak of one who gave me the name of Irenseus. 



ASSEMBLIES OF THE SAINTS. S7 

ASSEMBLIES OF THE SAINTS ; 

OR, THE SONS OF GOD IN COUNCIL* 

Not in the United States of America only, but in Protes- 
tant England, and in other lands where the Christian religion 
has made its power felt, this month of May, in every return- 
ing year, is marked by assemblies of the people of God, for 
the advancement of his kingdom. Other seasons of the year 
have similar meetings, but in no one month of the year are 
so many held, and with such effect. In London the May 
meetings are more in number than the days of the month, 
and sometimes there are five or six meetings in a day. They 
are more scattered in this country; religious anniversaries 
and protracted sessions of ecclesiastical bodies are held in 
widely different parts of the land. And the fact is exhilarat- 
ing and impressive that the interests of Christ's kingdom in 
the earth are the theme of thoughtful deliberation in the as- 
sembled minds of uncounted multitudes at the same time, in 
many countries all over the globe. 

They come together to recount the work of the past year, 
and to compare its progress with that of years gone by. And 
when we get the reports together, we shall have evidence of 
two great facts — the one that it has been a year of uncommon 
boasting on the part of the enemies of the gospel, and the 
other that the church of God has made uncommon progress. 
The two facts go together in beautiful connection. Never 
did we hear so much of the decay of faith, and of the progress 
of unbelief, as in the year past. And it is probable that in no 
previous year has the church made more substantial gain, 
never was Christianity so progressive and powerful in the 
world. 

This gives special interest and imparts fresh vigor to the 
assemblies of the friends of religious truth. It sometimes 

* This was written on the eve of a journey to Lexington, Ky., to visit the 
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (Southern). See next Letter. 



5.8 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

seems to one looking on as if each one of these meetings 
had its thoughts turned too much to the one object of its 
thoughts and prayers, forgetful for the moment that it is part 
of one great scheme that combines the machinery of all de- 
partments of Christian work for the conversion of the world 
to God. This is the idea that should dominate the heart of 
every Christian, whatsoever his ecclesiastical connection. It 
is a common work, for a common purpose, and the same God 
is Lord over all. Well for this cause it is that each works as 
if everything depended on his faithfulness, and better still it 
is when all feel that they are parts of one whole. 

In the days of Job, when the sons of God came together 
we are told that Satan came also among them. And it is not 
certain that he always stays away in our day when the good 
people gather to take counsel in the matters that concern the 
kingdom of Christ on earth. That the devil goes about as 
actively and wakefully now as ever, there is no manner of 
doubt. Modern improvements in travel may not be of any 
advantage to him, but he uses all the facilities of the press 
and the telegraph to make his power felt in every place where 
the friends of God are met. He is far more on the alert to 
employ these agencies than the church is. We make loud 
lamentations over the depravity of the newspapers and books 
that fill the public mind with evil ; but we are not half awake 
to the importance of filling every house with the truth through 
the printed messages that our own papers and pages might 
convey. 

So the devil gets into our religious meetings, and makes 
himself felt, if he is not seen, in the excitement of unhallowed 
ambitions, selfish or narrow prejudices, divisive and distract- 
ing measures, that hinder the work of the church. Some of the 
most painful, unseemly and unholy conflicts, bloodless indeed 
but fearfully fatal to the soul, have been fought on the floor 
of Christian assemblies, in the midst of meetings for the pro- 
motion of Christ's own work. The devil was there. This 
was his work. He took advantage of the weakness and folly 
of good men, and made them for the time foemen instead of 
friends. It is one hopeful sign of the times that no root of 



ASSEMBLIES OF THE SAINTS. 59 

bitterness is now springing up in any part of the garden of 
the Lord. All our religious gatherings are heavenly places, 
in which the spirit of peace is dwelling, while the grand de- 
sign of giving the gospel to the whole world is the constrain- 
ing and controlling element. When the sons of God come 
together for such a purpose, it does seem to be the height of 
impudence for Satan to come also. He would not dare to 
come except in some disguise by which he hopes to deceive 
even the elect. He sets men up to seek the pre-eminence, to 
carry their own points, to get ahead of their rivals, to glorify 
themselves. Some selfish scheme, some pet policy, some 
party or clique or school, is to be fostered, and the devil 
makes good men sometimes very mean and one sided when 
they ought to be generous, magnanimous and noble. Even 
ministers of the gospel are not above the reach of Satan's in- 
fluences, and some of these good ministers fall into the snares 
of the devil, and bring reproach on the name of the Master 
whom they serve. 

Compared with the number, magnitude and power of the 
gatherings of Christian people to do good work, how few, 
far between and feeble are the assembled forces of the ene- 
mies of God and his truthi Think of that, and of what it 
means. Now and then you hear of one infidel convention. 
Its numbers are not great ; its members are not men of 
power; and what they do and say amounts to nothing. They 
do not spread light and liberty among the nations. They do 
not support colleges and other seminaries of learning. They 
do not form combinations to prevent crime, relieve poverty 
and stay the tide of human misery. They are no more kind 
to their fellow-men than they are loving toward God. What 
would this country and the world be to-day if infidels were 
the philanthropists and the agents of moral reform } All the 
power for good worth speaking of springs from the heart of 
Christian benevolence, and the humanity that helps is divine. 
So the man Christ Jesus was the God-man ; and in Him who 
took our nature was the source of that love that lives to re- 
deem and save lost men. 

Let the heathen rage ; let the free-thinkers and the social 



6o IHEN'j^US LETTERS. 

philosopheVs, the men of falsely called science and the friends 
of progress, take counsel together. He that sitteth in the 
heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision. 
" The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands 
of angels : the Lord is among them." In these assemblies of 
the saints, in these sessions of the sons of God in council 
wherever met, in the promise that the Head of the Church is 
in the midst of them, is seen the sign of His coming who shall 
rule from sea to sea. He goeth before them, and " the king- 
dom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under 
the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of 
the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, 
and all dominions shall serve and obey Him." 



NORTHERN DELEGATES IN THE SOUTHERN 
GENERAL ASSEMBLY.* 

We have met the South, and we are theirs. They have 
captured our entire force, and we are at their mercy, unable 
to retreat and quite willing to stay. 

The scene to-day in the First Presbyterian Church in this 
cit)' will be historic. It had been rumored far and wide that 
Saturday had been designated as the day for the reception of 
the delegates from the Northern Church to the General As- 
sembly now in session here. People from Frankfort, Louis- 
ville, and other places, and from all the surrounding country, 
had come to enjoy the occasion. The church was crowded. 
The morning was lovely. All faces seemed to shine with the 
gladness of an anticipated joy. They are as fine-looking 
people, men and women, these Kentuckians, as are made. 
And as they packed the house, with members of Assembly 
and their wives and daughters from all over the Southern 
States, all animated, earnest and expectant, it was a sight for 
angels to admire. But I must let a local artist describe the 

* Written from Lexington, Ky., May 19, 1883. 



NORTHERN DELEGATES IN THE SOUTH. 6 1 

scene, lest you suppose that my participation in it has col- 
ored the picture. The Lexington Transc7-ipt says : 

" By nine o'clock the church was comfortably filled, and by 
ten it was jammed. Seats were placed in the outside aisles, 
and in front of the doors, out into the vestibule, was a jam of 
human beings. Some of the colored brethren had installed 
themselves in the gallery, but the ladies soon routed them 
out, and the organ was surrounded by a perfect bouquet of 
beauty. Since the day of Gen. John C. Breckinridge's fu- 
neral so many people have not been in the First Church. It 
was a remarkably fine-looking body of people, too. From 
the pulpit half-way back were the members of the Assembly, 
with here and there a handsome lady to soften down the sol- 
emn array of theological warriors. The back half of the 
church was chiefly filled with ladies, only here and there a 
man." 

This was literally true ; and what followed would so tax my 
proverbial modesty to speak of, that I shall draw upon the 
graphic powers of the reporters of the Lexington Press. The 
hour appointed arrived : 

"At this moment a venerable and highly intelligent-look- 
ing body of men appeared in the entrance to the centre aisle. 
The hum of voices ceased, and eager eyes turned to catch a 
first glimpse of the distinguished men who bore greetings of 
love from the great Northern Presbyterian Church. In ad- 
vance of the others walked Hon. William Strong, of Phila- 
delphia, the chairman of the delegation. A gentleman of 
national reputation, a distinguished jurist, of broad culture, 
and withal a devout Christian, no fitter person could have 
been chosen the chairman of a delegation with a mission of 
such moment to perform. Next came the venerable and 
learned editor of the New York Observer, Rev. S. Irenaeus 
Prime, D.D. Following him came the Rev. S. J. Niccolls, 
D.D., of St. Louis, Mo., the most fluent and eloquent speaker 
in the delegation. Next came Rev. E. P. Humphrey, D.D., 
of Louisville, Ky., with Hon. Samuel W. Moore, of Chicago, 
bringing up the rear. The delegation was accompanied by 
Rev. J. J. Bullock, D.D., of Washington, D. C; Rev. J. B. 



62 IREN^US LETTERS. 

Stratton, D.D., of Natchez, Miss.; Rev. J. B. Fitzgerald, of 
Virginia; and Rev. D. O. Davies, of Henderson, Ky. As this 
distinguished body of men marched up the aisle the Assem- 
bly arose as a mark of respect to them. The delegation was 
introduced to the Moderator by Dr. Bullock, and the Mode- 
rator in behalf of the Assembly extended them a cordial 
welcome." 

Judge Strong then presented each delegate, who was taken 
by the Stated Clerk, Rev. J. R. Wilson, D.D., and introduced 
to the Moderator, who, taking him by the hand, introduced 
him to the Assembly by name. The silence was profound ; 
anxiety and animation were manifest as if all were on the eve 
of a great event. 

Judge Moore, of Chicago, read an elaborate paper on the 
duty and blessedness of fraternal relations, giving historical 
and biographical reminiscences, and making an able argu- 
ment and appeal. I followed Judge Strong with a few re- 
marks. Then the Rev. Dr. Niccolls, of St. Louis, delivered 
a very eloquent and beautiful address, which was received 
with great delight. At its close the Assembly sang " Blest 
be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love." 

The Rev. E. P. Humphrey, D.D., of Louisville, venerable 
and beloved, a man of great power, gave a glowing history 
of the rise and growth of Presbyterianism in Kentucky and 
the parts beyond, and made a strong impression on the As- 
sembly. 

The Hon. Judge Strong was then conducted to the plat- 
form, and his noble form, his striking, speaking and benevo- 
lent countenance, and his dignified presence commanded 
admiration before he said a word. He then presented the 
salutations of the Assembly North to the Assembly of the 
South, assuring this Assembly of the profound sympathy, 
sincere and unanimous affection of the Northern Church and 
people for those who had so kindly received that delegation, 
and closed with the prayer that they might be abundantly 
prospered in their work, and enjoy the spirit of God in all 
their churches. 

The Moderator, Dr. Pryor, responded with prompt cor- 



NORTHERN DELEGATES IN THE SOUTH. 63 

diality, and intense earnestness of manner, expressing the 
great pleasure the Assembly had in receiving the delegation 
and especially such a delegation. He deplored the past alter- 
nations and separations. He had seen the horrors of the 
battle-fields in our recent war, and his heart had been almost 
broken over the scenes. But far more distressing had been 
the alienations and strifes between brethren of the same 
faith, engaged in the same great work. He begged them to 
assure the Assembly which they represent of the hearty 
satisfaction and enjoyment with which their messages of 
peace and good-will had been received and reciprocated. He 
said: " We put our hearts in our hand, and extend it sin- 
cerely to you. We mean what we say when we tell you that 
we desire to co-operate heartily with you in the extension of 
the kingdom of Christ." After many other words of tender 
affection and strong emotion, he bade the delegation wel- 
come. Two verses more of the same hymn were now sung, 
and one of the delegation was called upon by the Moderator 
to lead the Assembly in prayer. After this the Assembly 
adjourned until Monday morning. And now let the local 
papers describe what followed. 

" The scene on adjournment was one that may never be 
witnessed again in a century. Assemblymen grasped each 
other's hands in mute or expressed emotion. The committee 
from Saratoga were surrounded, and such a hand-shaking as 
they received is beyond description. Old Mississippi, Arkan- 
sas and Texas ' rebs ' vied with each other in reaching the 
' Yanks ' to shake hands. Numbers of ladies pressed through 
the jam of men and congratulated the leaders on both sides 
of the great drama. Dr. Prime started for the door, but was 
halted and surrounded at every step, so that he was fully 
half an hour getting out. As the committee emerged from 
the house they were again and again assaulted by the hand- 
shakers, and if they had any doubts as to the ' rebel ' sincerity 
before they came to Lexington, they had all the doubts 
shaken out of them." 

The speeches of the delegates and of the Moderator were 
irequently interrupted with applause, which I am told is not 



64 IREN^US LETTERS. 

permitted in the sessions of the Assembly. In vain the 
Moderator repeatedly rapped for order, but the good feeling 
of the members overcame their respect for authority and 
found expression in somewhat noisy demonstration. I was 
assured that such a scene of enthusiasm had never been 
known on the floor of the venerable body. 

It is quite probable that this feeling was not unanimous, 
and subsequent discussion may show that there is still a mi- 
nority averse to fraternal relations. But at present every- 
thing indicates the restoration of peace and good-will. 

The personal kindness with which I have been received in 
this goodly city of Lexington is simply beyond description, 
and I do not know that I can more fittingly convey the emo- 
tions and recollections awakened by this second visit here 
than by repeating the words with which I closed my remarks 
to the Assembly on our reception : 

" I am reminded that twenty-five years ago our undivided 
and blessed Assembly met in this lovely city of Lexington. 
I was in the pulpit with that profound theologian and elo- 
quent preacher and beloved man. Dr. Thornwell. Dr. Plumer 
was here, and Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, men of power, 
men of God, who waxed valiant in fight for the truth and the 
church. You may build your walls about your Assembly as 
high as you please, but you cannot build them so high as to 
separate me from communion with them. I would mount 
up on wings as the eagle, and soar into the heaven of hea- 
vens, where they reign with Christ and the saints. I would 
find Thornwell with Paul, and Plumer with Isaiah, and Breck- 
inridge with Peter, and all joining with the redeemed in the 
song of Moses and the Lamb. You might as well try to 
strike out the names of Washington and Henry Clay from 
the history of my country, and to say I have no part with 
them, as to deny me, by resolutions and proclamations, true 
sympathy and fraternal relations with these and other great 
and good men whose lives are my heritage and a part of the 
annals of my church. With them I held sweet communion 
while they lived, and to renew that communion it were sweet 
to die." 



DEATH OF PRESIDENTS. 65 



DEATH OF PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

While there is life there is hope, and this letter is written 
while General Grant is yet living. True, we are assured by his 
physicians that it is impossible for him to recover, and it is 
quite probable that before you read what I am now writing 
the General's last battle will be over. 

LINCOLN AND GARFIELD. 

What tragic interest invests their dying hours ! No victory 
or defeat in the long and bloody war so stirred the nation's 
heart as the murder of Lincoln in the midst of his mighty 
task. And Garfield, on the threshold of his great work, 
falls by an assassin's hand. And now Grant, the great 
military chieftain, twice President of the United States, is 
yielding to disease, and dying in his bed. He never dis- 
played more heroism on the battle-field than in his chamber 
of death. One who has been with him night and day tells 
me that he is the gentlest, most patient and pleasant sick 
person in the world ; never complaining, never impatient, 
but more cheerful than any of those about him. He has a 
vein of humor in him which reveals itself even in his suffer- 
ings. And saying that reminds me of the only personal 
interview I ever had with him. 

We were returning from the centennial celebration at Lex- 
ington, Mass. I showed him a pair of pistols which Pitcairn 
wore when making tlie attack at Lexington, and with one of 
which he fired the first shot in the war of the American 
Revolution. They were of the old flint-lock pattern, silver- 
mounted, and very clumsy. General Grant handled them, and 
then laughingly remarked, " If I were going to fight a duel I 
would like the other man to use one of these." 

General Grant's long battle with death has led me to think 
of former Presidents. Washington's death was sudden ; the 
nation did not hear of his illness and were astounded by the 
intelligence that the Father of his Country was dead. He 

5 



(£ IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

was out on his farm on Thursday, December 12, 1799, and 
came home in the midst of rain, hail and snow : his neck was 
wet and the snow was hanging upon his hair. He was out 
again on Friday. He caught a violent cold, but declined to 
take anything for it, saying, " Let it go as it came." On 
Saturday morning he awoke very early, so hoarse as scarcely 
to be able to speak. The usual simple remedies were 
used. Physicians and friends were summoned. He was 
soon convinced that a mortal illness was on him. He was 
calm and resigned ; gave various directions about his affairs ; 
and as the end was nigh he said : " I am just going : have 
me decently buried, and do not let my body be put into the 
vault in less than three days after I am dead. Do you un- 
derstand me ?" And then he added, " It is well." He felt 
his own pulse, the hand dropped, and he expired without a 
struggle or a sigh. 

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, 
and that day the Fourth of July, a datewhich they had together 
helped to make the most memorable in the history of their 
country. This is one of the most remarkable coincidences in 
the world. They had been in correspondence by letter pre- 
viously ; both had a strong desire to see the return of that 
national anniversary ; both were in feeble condition as it ap- 
proached, and it was quite natural that the reaction on its 
arrival should be attended by the going out of the expiring 
taper. They died on the fiftieth anniversary of the day 
when both of them signed the Declaration of Independence. 
I remember perfectly the impression on the public mind 
when this double event was announced in newspapers and 
pulpits in the summer of 1826. 

James Madison lived to be more than eighty years of age 
and was venerated for his wisdom and integrity, though he, 
did make a little jest at his own expense when he was very 
old and feeble. Some friends called in while he was sitting 
up in bed, and he lay down, saying, " I always talk more 
easily when I lie.'' With all his wisdom he had this little 
weakness of being fond of hearing or saying a good thing. 
He died at his own residence in Montpelier, Va., in 1836. 



DEATH OF PRESIDENTS. 67 

James Monroe, after the death of his wife, came from Vir- 
ginia to the city of New York and resided here with his son- 
in-law, Samuel L. Gouverneur, at whose house he died July 
4, 1831, being the third President of the United States who 
died on the nation's birthday. 

John Quincy Adams, after having been President, was 
elected to the House of Representatives in Congress, and was 
stricken with mortal illness at his post in the House, Febru- 
ary 21, 1848. He was carried to.the Speaker's room, and saying 
" This is the last of earth ; I am content," he lay there until 
the 23d, and expired beneath the dome of the capitol. 

General Jackson, a man of war, an iron man, died of dropsy 
at his home, The Hermitage, near Nashville, confessing 
Christ on his death-bed, and expiring in the hope of the gos- 
pel in 1845. 

We have now come down to a period so recent that the 
several deaths of the Presidents are familiar to the present 
generation. Van Buren, Polk, Pierce and Buchanan died at 
their several homes. General Harrison was elected in 1840, 
entered upon office March 4, 1841, and died thirty-one days 
afterwards in the executive mansion. General Taylor was in- 
augurated March 4, 1849, and died in the White House July 
9, 1850. Thus we see that out of seventeen elected Presi- 
dents, before the present incumbent, four have died while in 
office ; and two of them by the hand of the assassin. And 
all this has been within the first century of the office; for if 
the life of the newly inaugurated President shall be continued 
till his term expires in 1889, the first hundred years will have 
then elapsed since the accession to the Presidency of him 
whom Congress by solemn resolution declared to be " first 
in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow- 
citizens." 

I have said very little of the religious character of these 
distinguished citizens, having long observed that political 
attachments deeply color the opinions entertained of the re- 
ligion of public men. It was once my pleasure to pass a 
week with one of the Presidents in the White House. Find- 
ing it to be his habit to pray daily with his assembled family, 



68 IREN^US LETTERS. 

I alluded to the fact in my Letter from Washington. One of 
my constant readers forbade the paper with my Letters to 
come into his house again, for he would not read the writ- 
ings of one who said that " such a man as that ever prays "! 
But it is worthy of mention and memory that in this line of 
seventeen elected Presidents so many of them have been 
men of exalted moral character, so many of them were firm 
believers in the Christian religion, and that so many of them 
have died in the faith of the gospel. The office is entitled to 
the front rank among the political powers of the w'orld. 
The population it represents, the resources of the country, 
the vast extent of its territory, the influx of people from' 
other lands to become inhabitants of this, invest the chief 
magistracy of these United States with sublimity and gran- 
deur not surpassed by any kingdom, empire or republic on the 
face of the earth. And there is no man so great but religion 
makes him greater. " A cross that raises me " is his support 
when in mortal weakness the greatest of statesmen or cap- 
tains comes to die. 



WAR AVERTED: A SCENE IN THE SENATE OF 
THE UNITED STATES. 

"FIFTY-FOUR FORTY, OR FIGHT." 

An hour more critical than this (I am writing on the 
morning of April 25, 1885) was never in the history of na- 
tions. Great kingdoms are on the verge of an awful con- 
flict, which I pray that God in his infinite mercy may avert. 
Before you read these lines, the crisis may be past, or the 
bloody drama opened. The situation, so sublime and terri- 
ble, reminds me of another in which our own country was 
more immediately involved. 

The northwestern boundary- line between the United 
States and the British possessions was in dispute. Mr. Polk, 
the President, in his inaugural address had declared our 
title to the country of the Oregon "clear and unquestion- 



IVAI? AVERTED. 69 

able." The Democratic Party held that the dividing line 
was the latitude of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes 
north. The popular sentiment was condensed into the war- 
cry, "Fifty-four Forty, or Fight." The excitement was in- 
tense, and the tide seemed irresistibly sweeping us into war 
with Great Britain. General Cass was a leader in the Sen- 
ate, and his voice was for war. The subject was before the 
Senate while I was sitting in the gallery partaking largely of 
the excitement that raged on the floor below. Colonel 
Thomas H. Benton, the Nestor of the Senate, and its most 
distinguished Democratic member, was making a speech in 
reply to Mr. Cass, and against his own party, the President 
and the popular sentiment of the day. He had no notes, no 
books of reference, no maps, but with perfect self-command, 
without hesitation for a date or a fact, he went through a 
detail of history, diplomacy, statistical information, going 
back more than a hundred years, establishing the position 
that by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, between great Britain, 
France, Holland and other powers, the line between the 
French and British possessions had been settled much to 
the south of the one now claimed by the United States, and 
that it was impossible for us who had obtained title from 
France to make good our right to go up to 54.40. It was a 
wonderful exhibition of memory as well as intellectual force ; 
and when he concluded, having made out his case tri- 
umphantly. General Cass said, " The Senator has evidently 
been refreshing himself in history, and I am not prepared at 
this moment to reply." Mr. Benton, holding a glass of 
water in his hand, remarked, " I have not looked at the 
subject in forty years." 

Turning to a friend sitting by me I said, " There will be 
no war; the question is settled." History says, "The ad- 
ministration's views were opposed with so much force by 
Mr. Benton that Mr. Polk acquiesced and accepted 49 as 
the line." This was satisfactory to Great Britain, and the 
Northwestern Boundary Treaty of 1846 established that as 
the northern boundary of the United States and the south- 
ern line of the British possessions. 



"JO IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

In the interests of peace and in the name of Christianity, 
the dominant influence in the civilized world, is not this 
item in history an illustration of the power of truth and 
human reason, that the nations of the earth may contem- 
plate with advantage? The dispute between Russia and 
England is not so hard to compose as was ours with Great 
Britain in 1846. It is now nearly forty years since that war- 
cloud darkened our horizon, and most of those who were 
then on the stage have passed away. But I can recollect 
that the people clamored for war then just as British people 
are now hounding the government to immerse the world in 
blood.* It is the darkest phase of human nature that war 
is almost always popular. Kings and great generals dread 
it, but the outcry of the people bears them into the field of 
battle. 

War is the crime of all crimes. One side or the other, 
oftentimes both sides, are criminal. One resolute man in 
England or in Russia, we would think, might stand up and 
in the name of Jesus Christ and humanity roll back the tide 
of war. Colonel Benton was not a statesman of the highest 
order of ability. But his will-power was prodigious. Prob- 
ably it was greater than that of any statesman who has yet 
appeared in American history. When he put his foot down 
there was no human power that could make him take it up. 
Such men are great blessings to a nation when they are 
right. And they are generally right when they oppose a 
resort to arms to settle a dispute. For it is very nearly if 
not quite true that "there never was a good war or a bad 
peace." 

I am writing in the name of that religion which we all 
profess to hold as the sovereign rule of life. This sentiment 
ought to pervade society, be taught to our children, preached 
in our pulpits, proclaimed in the press till it becomes the 
habit of our thinking and the controlling opinion of civilized 
mankind. We imagine? in " piping times of peace" that the 



* Written in April, 1885, when Great Britain and Russia were negotiating 
upon Afghan matters. 



THE ADMIRAL AND THE TURK. 7 1 

millennial reign of Jesus has come. War between Christian 
nations appears to be an event two awful for contemplation 
as a possibility. And the next moment there comes a mes- 
sage like lightning across the sea that a little spark has 
caused an explosion, and mighty nations are harnessing the 
engines of destruction to determine a question of far smaller 
importance than our Oregon boundary-line in 1846. We 
pray to God to avert the impending storm. 

Perhaps there is not a statesman in England or Russia 
with the ability and opportunity to stand up as Benton did 
against his own party and the people, too, who are crying 
out for war. But the eyes of the world have been turned 
anxiously to the great German Chancellor, who might com- 
mand the waves and they would obey. At least, he ought 
to try. 

How sweet the thought, God reigns ! He lifts up and he 
puts down, and when he will he maketh wars to cease. 
Civil liberty and the gospel of the Son of God have ad- 
vanced in the wake of wars. The King of nations will over- 
turn and overturn till Shiloh come. Unto him shall the 
gathering of the people be. 

" Come, then, and added to Lhy many crowns 
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth, 
Thou who alone art worthy." 



THE ADMIRAL AND THE TURK. 

A WONDERFUL CHAPTER IN MODERN ORIENTAL 
DIPLOMAq^. 

In frequent conversations with the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, 
D.D., late President of Robert College, Constantinople, and 
now the President of Middlebury College, Vt., he has related 
to me the secret history of one of the most remarkable in- 
terventions of Providence in human affairs ever recorded 
outside of sacred history. 



72 IRENy^US LETTERS. 

The establishment of Robert College, on the Bosphorus, 
by the Christian liberality of Christopher R. Robert. Esq., 
was an event destined to work an important influence on 
the moral and intellectual renovation of the Levant. Dr. 
Hamlin had long been known and honored as a wise and 
able leader in Christian education at Constantinople. So 
far back as in 1853 I wrote to you, from that city, of the great 
work he was doing, and of the wonder among the people ex- 
cited by his extraordinary executive and inventive abilities. 
His energy and ingenuity were supplemented by the open 
purse of Mr. Robert, and the college was the result. But 
the story of the struggle which that conception passed 
through before it became an accomplished fact would make 
a book equal in interest to an Oriental romance. 

Having purchased an eligible site for the college. Dr. Ham- 
lin was making preparations for building, with the permission 
of the government. But he was soon informed that a pasha, 
of great influence, whose residence was near, was opposed to 
the college being located there, as it would interfere with 
his view and would be in his way generally! His mighti- 
ness raised such a commotion that it was deemed prudent to 
abandon the site. Another was found far more eligible, with 
a commanding view of the Bosphorus, a prospect of un- 
rivalled beauty, taking in the European and Asiatic shores, 
cities, mosques, minarets and palaces, and distant mountains. 
This was purchased, and again the work was commenced. 
The first blow was scarcely struck before a message came 
that some informality in the title must be corrected and the 
work must be suspended. 

Then and there began a series of vexatious delays that 
continued through sevoi long and tedious years ! Perhaps 
it was strange that the Turkish Government gave authority 
for the establishment of a Christian college in the capital of 
the Mahometan Empire. But the permission had been 
given, and now the same power was interposing to prevent 
the progress of an institution that might enlighten and revo- 
lutionize the country. 

In the mean time Dr, Hamlin had hired apartments for 



THE ADMIRAL AND THE TURK. 73 

the infant college, and was giving instructions to as many 
young men as he could make room for. They came from 
many nationalities represented in that curiously conglomer- 
ated empire. Seventy students filled the apartments; more 
were turned away : the college was an astonishing success 
before one stone was laid upon another. Its very success 
intensified the resolution of the government to restrain its 
growth. It was necessary to take energetic measures to in- 
duce the authorities to withdraw their opposition and to let 
the work go on under the original permission. 

The British Government was powerful in Turkey, and to 
Sir Henry Bulwer, Dr. Hamlin applied for his kind offices in 
behalf of the college. He expressed his entire readiness to 
make solicitations to that effect, but nothing came of it. 
The Sublime Porte was silent. 

Mr. Morris was the United States Minister, and exerted all 
the moral influence which he and our government might 
command, but all in vain. The Mahometan oracle was 
dumb. Mr. Robert, the founder of the college, went to 
Washington and personally interceded with Mr. Seward, 
then Secretary of State, to interpose and demand the recog- 
nition of the rights of an American citizen to the use of 
property secured under the permit of the Turkish Govern- 
ment. It was of no effect whatever. Mr. Morgan, a banker 
of New York, visiting Constantinople, became deeply inter- 
ested in the question, and returning home he waited on Mr. 
Seward and renewed the pressure. Mr. Seward was induced 
to lay the matter before the Turkish Minister in Washington, 
Blacque Bey. This was done with so much effect that the 
ambassador wrote to his master, the Sultan, advising him to 
adjust the matter of the college, as in the future complica- 
tions it might prove a thorny question. Even this made no 
impression, and things went along as before. 

By and by the insurrection in Crete arose, and there was 
imminent danger of war between the Greeks and Turks. It 
was rumored that the Greeks were expecting the arrival of 
an American monitor, an iron-clad, and fearful damage 
would be done if one of them should make its appearance in 



74 IREN^US LETTERS. 

front of Constantinople. It did not come. But an Ameri- 
can steamer did arrive, with Admiral Farragut, whose fame 
filled the world ! He was received with all the honors that 
Oriental hospitality could bestow on the great naval hero of 
the age. Dr. Hamlin called to pay his respects, and finding 
him for a few moments alone, in reply to the Admiral's in- 
quiries, he told him the story of the college, and of the ob- 
structions interposed by the Turkish authorities. In the 
midst of this conversation. Dr. Serapian, a gentleman who 
had received a thorough education in the theological and 
medical departments at Yale College and then returned and 
settled as a physician in Constantinople, entered the room 
.and engaged in the conversation. When the Admiral asked 
if it were possible for him to be of any service in adjusting 
the question, Dr. Serapian said : " You are to dine with this 
officer of government, and another, and another ; now be 
pleased to ask each one by whom you are entertained, 
' Why is not the agreement with Dr. Hamlin, the American, 
carried out, that he may go on and build the college .'' ' " And 
here Dr. Hamlin interposed, and said : " And whatever 
answer is given, will you be pleased. Admiral, to make no 
response, and no further inquiry ? " 

The gallant Admiral agreed to execute the mission in the 
way and manner suggested. 

The same day, and on succeeding days, he was the guest 
of several high officials, and he took special care, on each 
occasion, to make the proposed inquiry of his host. He re- 
ceived various answers in the way of explanation, no one of 
the officers of government intimating that the delay was 
final and fatal. To all these intimations the cautious Ad- 
miral made no reply or explanation, leaving each one to 
draw his own inferences as to the object of the inquiry. 

The Admiral at length took leave of the Ottoman Gov- 
ernment and pursued his voyage from port to port until he 
was welcomed home again. 

Not long afterwards, but so long as to forbid the supposi- 
tion that the two things had any relation to each other, Dr. 
Hamlin received from Mr, Morris, the U. S. Minister, a let- 



THE ADMIRAL AND THE TURK. 75 

ter informing him that an official communication had been 
received from the Turkish Government, giving full permis- 
sion to proceed with the erection of the college ! Why the 
order was now issued, or why it was so long delayed, it was 
impossible to surmise. In a few days the imperial Irade, or 
supreme volition, an irrevocable permit, was in solemn form 
communicated. The work was again begun, pushed on with 
intense vigor to a grand completion : and the noble college 
now stands resplendent on the heights, the brightest light- 
house in all the waters of the Levant. Its doors were 
opened. The seventy students became two hundred ; and the 
institution was recognized as a power and a benediction. 

One day a Turkish gentleman, of elegant manners and 
distinguished bearing, called at the college and requested 
permission to survey its appointments and work. Dr. Ham- 
lin conducted him into all the apartments and departments. 
He heard the exercises of the classes. He was full of admira- 
tion. Dr. Hamlin led him to the tower, from which he looked 
out on one of the most glorious panoramas of land and 
water the human eye will ever look on. The gentleman, in 
his enthusiasm extolling the magnificence of the view, ex- 
claimed : 

" We would never have permitted this college to be erected 
had it not been for that insurrection in Crete." 

Dr. Hamlin now perceived that his guest was an officer of 
the government, and at once asked : 

" And why not ? What had that to do with it .''" 

"Oh, we understood it. The Greeks wanted that Admiral 
Yzxxdgoot to help them, and when he was here he asked every 
one of the pashas with whom he dined what objections they 
had to the college being built. We saw what he was at — 
that your government was holding this college question over 
us ; and it was better to have a hundred colleges built than 
to have one American monitor here ; so we smoothed the 
matter all over by just issuing the permission. That is the 
way you got it." 

Dr. Hamlin saw, as every believer in divine Providence 
must see, the hand of God in this matter. The British and 



76 IREN^US LETTERS. 

the American governments had interposed in vain. Ad- 
miral Farragut, on a voyage of pleasure, is prompted to ask a 
simple question that rouses the apprehensions of the Ma- 
hometan oppressor. His sleep flies from him. Visions of 
American monitors in the Golden Horn disturb his dreams. 
He takes counsel of his chief men, and they advise him to 
restore to that Christian missionary what belongs to him 
and let him do as he will with his own. Thus he was with- 
out any human intervention or pressure or constraint im- 
pelled to do justly lest some great evil should come upon his 
kingdom. Admiral Farragut was the unconscious instrument 
in the accomplishment of a work which through seven long 
years had baffled the wisdom of the two greatest powers of 
the earth. And the Admiral had done it without knowing it. 
The story reads like a chapter out of the chronicles of the 
Old Testament, and nothing more evidently providential is 
recorded in the history of Nineveh or Babylon. 



THE BURIAL OF DR. ROGERS. 

In forty years and more of life in New York City, I have 
never seen so many clergymen assembled at the funeral of 
one of their number as were present Thursday (October 27, 
1881), at the services in memory of the late Ebenezer Piatt 
Rogers, D.D. They were held in the South Reformed 
Church, of which he was, through eighteen happy years, the 
honored and beloved pastor. 

An hour before the public services his brethren of the 
clergy met in the chapel. The assembly was very remark- 
able for numbers and character, all the evangelical denomina- 
tions being largely represented by many of the most distin- 
guished ministers. The Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, President of the 
Theological Seminary, was called to the chair, and the Rev. 
Dr. Armitage led in a tender and appropriate prayer. When a 
committee had been appointed to embody the sentiment of 



THE BURIAL OF DR. ROGERS. 7/ 

the brethren in resolutions of respect and affection, they 
went on to speak freely of him, one after another, in terms 
of admiration and love. It was not surprising that all loved 
him, but it was strange to hear that all loved him so much. 
And their memories of him were the pleasantest. His warm, 
genial nature, his welcome to those who sought him in his 
home and in his study, his readiness to deny himself to do a 
favor, his deep personal piety impressing every one with a 
sense of his nearness to God, and longing for the souls of 
men — these features of his character were dwelt upon by 
several speakers with fondness. Others delighted to recur 
to his playful humor, his flashing wit, so bright and yet al- 
ways so kind, never wounding, always pleasing, making him 
the life of every social circle, the light and joy of every 
house which enjoyed his presence. 

At this point one of the ministers produced a letter re- 
ceived that day from a distant friend, relating an incident in 
the city life of Dr. Rogers which was recognized as exceed- 
ingly characteristic. 

" Through a delightful social intercourse of many years, I 
have had occasion again and again to mark his generous 
nature, as well as his genial soul. With a sparkling wit, ac- 
companied always with the most benevolent purpose, and a 
desire both to amuse and instruct, his conversation de- 
lighted every circle in which he moved. One day he had an 
amusing interview with a friend whom he met in one of the 
public conveyances of the city. Dr. R. said to him : 

" ' My friend, I am glad to meet you ; I want to ask you to 
give three hundred dollars to an object in which I am much 
interested, and in which I hope you will be.' 

" The Doctor then stated to his friend the object for which 
he was soliciting contributions. After first a refusal, and 
then a reconsideration of the sudden appeal, the gentleman 
replied : 

" ' Dr. Rogers, I will give you the sum you ask on one 
condition, that you will allow me to put upon your tomb- 
stone this inscription : "And it came to pass that the beggar 
died." 



78 IREN^US LETTERS. 

" The Doctor, with his characteristic quickness in repartee, 
said at once : ' Certainly I will, if you will add the remainder 
of the verse, " and was carried by (he angels into Abrahants 
bosom. 

The speakers went back to their recollections of him when 
he was a boy at the village school, and freely said that many 
of the fine and beautiful traits of character that adorned his 
ministerial walk and conversation were visible in the days 
of his early youth. One venerable man said, " I have been 
in the ministry near him in every place but one in which he 
has been settled, and he has everywhere and always been the 
same delightful, charming friend, the same devout man of 
God, winning all hearts to himself and leading souls to 
Christ." The words love, lovely, loving, were more fre- 
quently than any others on the lips of the speakers. No 
other words seemed to meet the heart-wants of those who 
were trying to express their feelings now that he was gone. 

There was no time to pursue these remarks, which fol- 
lowed one another in rapid succession, for the hour had 
come when we must take up the precious body of our 
brother and bear it into the house of God where the great 
congregation were waiting. Devout men carried Stephen to 
his burial, and a more goodly company than ours seldom, if 
ever, attended a saint on his way to the grave. The elders 
of his church, who had stood by him so long and so lov- 
ingly, and his people and friends from other churches, and 
men of business, senators and secretaries, learned and elo- 
quent professors and presidents, pastors and authors of wide 
fame, and men of business and wealth, and the poor whom 
he had befriended, joined in the procession as we walked 
with the remains of our friend and laid them reverently in 
front of the pulpit which had been the throne and seat of 
his power. The house was heavily draped with the symbols 
of mourning, but there was no need of them, for sorrow sat 
on every face and pressed on every heart. We listened to the 
triumphant words of Paul, and rejoiced in the hope of that 
day when this mortal shall put on immortality. We sang 
hymns that the dead while yet living had been fond of 



THE BURIAL OF DR. ROGERS. 79 

singing; for to all his other gifts he added yet this also — 
that he could lead the songs of the saints in the sanctuary, 
and often did, to the praise of Christ and the joy of his 
people. Then we prayed for the stricken household and the 
smitten church, and tried to put our hands into those of 
Him whom we call our elder brother, one born for adversity, 
and who wept with them who mourned a brother dead. 

The three addresses which were made were full of precious 
memories of the departed, warm eulogies that must have 
seemed extravagant to those (if any such were in the house) 
who did not know him of whom they were spoken. But 
when Dr. Taylor and Dr. Chambers declared there was no 
pastor in the city more nearly perfect as a model of all that is 
to be desired in a pastor, they were free to challenge denial and 
to assert it in the hearing of that great throng of men who 
held the same high office. I thought it the finest eulogy by 
one pastor of another when Dr. Chambers said : " I have 
often thought, if I were a layman coming into the city with 
a family of children, Dr. Rogers would be my clioice for a 
pastor before all others." And when we had laid these honest 
words upon his memory, and shed warmer tears, the great 
assembly came forward and looked in sadness and silence 
upon the face of the dead. What a procession of mourners ! 
It was a long procession of friends sorrowing that they 
should see his placid face no more. 

Next morning we went with the remains to Fairfield, 
Conn., and laid him by the side of his parents in the rural 
cemetery there. His father was an old resident of New 
York. His mother was a daughter of Ebenezer Piatt, of 
Huntington, Long Island. They lived in this city until the 
year 1830, when they removed with their five children to Fair- 
field ; and there they were buried. It was a cool, cloudy Octo- 
ber day when we went out of town into the country to find a 
grave for our friend. Autumn leaves were falling all about us. 
"The melancholy days, the saddest of the year," have come. 
But beyond the autumn and the winter, beyond the coldness 
and the darkness of the tomb, the light of a brighter morn 
than this was breaking on our weeping eyes. And I heard 



8o IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

a voice from heaven, saying, "Thy brother shall rise 
again." 

And so another of my loves in life is quenched in death. 
Good-by, dear, blessed, sainted Rogers, good -by ! "Very 
pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love was wonderful." 
And where thou art now, with Christ, God grant we may be 
also. 



THE SONGS OF LONGFELLOW ARE ENDED. 

" Lile is real ! Life is earnest! 

And the grave is not its goal ; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,' 

Was not spoken of the soul." 

H. W. Longfellow. 

The Psalm of Life is ended, was probably the first expres- 
sion of many when they heard of the death of Mr. Longfellow. 
His life has been so like a psalm. Full of poetry and purity, 
majesty and beauty, calm and strong, it has risen and rolled 
on in solemn and stately numbers to its fitting close. 

When great and good men leave the stage of life, and we 
are compelled to feel that they will be seen no more on earth, 
it is very pleasant to have known their faces and forms, and 
to preserve distinct memories of them as they were in the 
flesh. This is one of my secret and very great enjoyments, 
as the living pass by and are gone : to keep in the mind im- 
ages of the departed, converse with them in spirit, recall the 
words they said, the smiles that lighted up their eyes, and 
the pressure of their hands when we parted for the last 
time. I have the names written down in a book of remem- 
brance of hundreds: names the world is familiar with; 
names many of them that "the world will not let die," with 
whom it has been my happiness to have been in company. 
In this list of names is that of the great poet who has just 
now taken leave of us. I dined with him nearly forty years 
ago, and the recollections of his appearance at that period in 
his life are as fresh as the memory of the last portrait that I saw 



THE SONGS OF LONGFELLOW ARE ENDED. 8 1 

of the venerable bard, with his gray beard covering the face 
that was then ruddy and fair. And all the way on, since that 
memorable occasion, his growth has been in the eye of the 
world. 

I observe our English friends are pleased to say that the 
poems of Longfellow are more widely read in England than 
any of their poets, except Tennyson. That exception 
would not be made on our side of the sea. Doubtless hun- 
dreds read Longfellow to one who knows anything of the 
poet laureate of England. Yet it is fit that they should be 
spoken of together. They have the common and noble 
praise of being the friends of truth and virtue, and whatso- 
ever is lovely and of good report. The secret of Longfellow's 
universal acceptance, alike among the lowly and the lofty of 
this world's people, is that he touches the universal heart, 
and only to give it comfort and joy. He is not sad. In 
company he was very cheerful, and his conversation revealed 
a heart in tune with the pleasant words of his fellow-men. 
To call him gay would not convey a true thought of him, 
though I have been told that he was more so than he ap- 
peared to be. The most prosaic line of his I remember is 

"And things are not what they seem." 

I would not think it incredible that a mind so full of things 
of beauty, and a heart so full of love for all mankind, should 
be in perpetual sunshine. That he was often sad, the sweet- 
est, tenderest and most read of his poems give painful evi- 
dence. Yet what a loss to the world it would have been had 
he not written just those verses which have fallen upon and 
sunk into the deep waters of human sorrow, and yielded that 
strange comfort one finds in having his grief put into words! 
It is as if the writer had been in the wine-press where the 
reader is bleeding, and had survived ; had come out of great 
tribulation himself with garments made white in the trial, 
and therefore was able to minister to them who are mourn- 
ing still. Christ Jesus has wrought the same idea in his 
work and revealed it unto us, and we know through him 
there is a knowledge gained by experience that even Infinite 
6 



82 IREN^US LETTERS. 

wisdom would not otherwise enjoy. Thus Jesus knows how 
to sympathize with those who have loved and lost. Long- 
fellow, in the " Footsteps of the Angels," sings to us of 
those 

" Who the cross of suffering bore, 

Folded their pale hands so meekly, 
Spoke with us on earth no more !" 

And when we are thus reminded of our bereavements, and 
of them who have gone before us into the world of spirits, 
all at once we are taken out of our own experience, into sym- 
pathy with the poet who writes : 

"And with them the being beauteous 
Who unto my youth was given, 
More than all things else to love me, 
And is now a saint in heaven ; 

" With a slow and noiseless footstep 
Comes that messenger divine, 
Takes the vacant chair beside me, 
Lays her gentle hand in mine ; 

" And she sits and gazes at me," etc. 

We read, and the story seems to be a bit of personal ex- 
perience ; it is so real or, as we say, life-like, even when con- 
versing with the dead. The same sensation is awakened by 
the first stanza of the most familiar of Longfellow's hymns, 
" Resignation :" 

" There is no flock, however watched and tended, 
But one dead lamb is tnere ! 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
But has one vacant chair." 

How many homes are in those four lines ! The death of 
little children is as common as the flock and the fireside : he 
states the fact only, and it brings a sort of comfort to the 
smitten household that their sorrow is like the sorrow of 
millions — of Rachel " for her children crying." But the poet 
has more precious balm than this, even the name of Christ 



THE SONGS OF LONGFELLOW ARE ENDED. 83 

whose sweet perfume soon fills the house ; and when he has 
left " the one whom he called dead " in heaven, 

" Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution," 

he then bids the mourner weep : he knows that tears are 
healing ; 

" By silence sanctifying, not concealing 
The grief that must have way." 

It is very likely that this poem has been read in more 
households than any other of Longfellow's, and there are 
very few in the language that are more familiar to the ear 
and heart of suffering humanity. Some years ago a very 
plain, e-iderly man, apparently a farmer quite away from 
home, came into my office, and produced a sheet of paper. 
He said his daughter had written a piece of poetry ; he had 
read it, but was no judge of poetry, and for that matter he 
knew nothing about it, and had no opinion as to its being fit 
to print, but he liked this very much, and if I liked it as well 
as he did, he thought I would put it into the paper. "Are 
you sure your daughter wrote this out of her owti headf" I 
inquired, and the old man said she did. It was Longfellow's 
" Resignation." She had learned it undoubtedly, and it had 
sung in her heart and soul and mind, until it seemed to be 
her own, and, without a thought of taking what was another's, 
she had put all those lines upon paper. Her father, full of 
admiration at the wonderful gifts of his daughter, had 
brought them to me. In the same way, but not with like re- 
sults, I trust, thousands of young men have taken Longfel- 
low's Excelsior into their very being: its aspiring thought 
has to them become an inspiration, and made them conquer- 
ors. They have excelled because their motto was, and their 
song. Excelsior. 

" Lives of great men all remind us," 
" Learn to labor and to wait," 
" To suffer and be strong," 

are lines, with scores of others, that have been assimilated 
with the moral and mental food of the people, till they are 



84 IREN^US LETTERS. 

in the thought of men, with the power of proverbs, the ex- 
perience of thousands condensed into the word of one. 

What a gift, to be able to sing for the world ! To put into 
the form, and to give the power of wings to pure, holy, up- 
lifting thought, so that it shall fly over the land and sea, 
lighting on the cot of the sick one in the lowly valley, and 
then flying into the palace window, where the smitten queen 
mourns her beloved dead ; cheering the wearied laborer 
when his day's work is over, and rousing the nation's heart 
with stirring song : 

" Sail on, O ship of State ! 
Sail on, O Union strong and great ! 
Humanity with all its fears, 
With all the hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate !" 

The best gifts of God are by some most basely abused. 
But when a nation, yes, a race, the human race, wherever 
English speech is known, is silently sad in hearing of Long- 
fellow's death, mourning that a friend to whom they are in 
debt for comfort and aid, is gone, I think how good and how 
blessed it is to have filled the world with music without one 
false note ; with pictures and not a canvas on which an eye 
can look with pain ; with thoughts all and only pure, and 
purifying ; making rich and adding no sorrow ; songs to be 
sung in all time to exalt, console and bless. Happy the 
poet who sleeps under wreaths from all lands ! happy the 
poet whose songs have made the whole world kin ! 



EMERSON AND THE CHILDREN. 

It was not my pleasure to spend more than one evening 
in company with Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Then he made 
but one remark which left a memorable impression on my 
mind. Two children of the gentleman at whose house we 
met were playing in the room, when their father remarked : 



EMERSOM AND THE CHILDREN. 85 

"Just the interesting age." 

"And at what age," asked Mr. Emerson. " are children not 
interesting .-'" He regarded them with the eye of a philoso- 
pher and a poet, and doubtless saw the possibilities that sur- 
round their very being with infinite interest. 

With the added view of a Christian believer, considera- 
tions of eternity as well as of time invest the child with a 
sentiment in the highest degree sublime. 

So much of play and prattle is associated with infancy and 
childhood, that it requires a little thought to get hold of the 
serious and wonderful that surround and pervade an exist- 
ence suddenly merged in our own, and to be associated with 
ours through the life that now is, perhaps always. Mr. 
Emerson would apprehend all this, and in the child playing 
on the floor would see a future hero, perhaps an angel. 

To me there is nothing in social life more disagreeable 
than a child assuming to be a man. It is better for a child, 
when a child, to be a child. To think as a child and to 
speak as a child was what one of the greatest men said he 
did when he was one. Old heads on young shoulders are 
out of place. To be natural is far more pleasing than affec- 
tation, however smart the child may be. The tnteresti'ng is 
not to be found in what the child is taught to do and say, be- 
yond its years, out of the line of easy development, but in 
the spontaneous outcome of the child-soul that animates its 
little body, and gives signs of the budding genius and the 
swelling heart. The speeches of little children are often 
garnered, and repeated to admiring friends, but they are 
not so much admired for their evidence of smartness be- 
yond their years, as they are for those strange associations of 
ideas that give them the semblance of inspiration. They are 
so odd and unexpected, they excite wonder, and fond parents 
imagine there never were such children before. 

I have often tried to imagine what children are thinking 
about as they lie in the cradle, long before they have learned 
a word. They do think, and words are not needful to 
thoughts. It is well to bear this in mind when playing with 
them. Impressions for good or evil may be made on an in- 



86 I RE N^ us LETTERS. 

fant's mind, in the first months of its life, and continued to 
old age. We do not sufficiently appreciate this susceptibil- 
ity. We notice its words and ways, without thinking that 
what we are saying and doing will have much to do with 
its future health of body and soul. It has often surprised 
me to be assured by parents that their children read these 
letters of mine in the Observer from week to week. Some 
have told me that their children read them all, and make 
them the subject of conversation. And that fact wakes me 
up to the thought that very little can be done for the young 
after they have ceased to be children. At any age in child- 
hood they are interesting, from an infant of a week old to 
the time when they pass out of their teens, and they are 
children all that time, infants in the eye of the law, though 
the word infant means taispcaking only. It was this thought 
that commended the children, little children, to the Great 
Teacher, and led him to say of such is the kingdom. Few of 
the older people are brought in. Therefore he would have 
little children come unto him. There is no point of time 
in the child's life when it may not be made the subject of 
the grace that saves. And if the child has lived to be old 
enough to read, and has not learned the way of life through 
Jesus Christ, just so much time has been lost already, and so 
much greater the need of diligence in seeking after God. 
Get the heart set on him and his service, and all the rest of 
life's work will be safe, easy, and will finally end in glory. 

There is great difference among men in the interest they 
take in children. Mr. Emerson was ardently and always in- 
terested in them. I have known very great men who found 
pleasure in playing with children, even in the most childish 
games. One of my friends being shown into the palace of 
the king of France, found him on his hands and knees 
romping with his children, as he told me. "just like any 
private father." I should think so. Why not? Being 
king he did not cease to be a man, an^ as a man he loved 
the children. They interested him as they did the Concord 
philosopher. And there is a great difference in children, 
which explains the lack of interest which people take in 



EMERSON AND THE CHILDREN. 8/ 

them, Mr. Jerrold said he was always glad to have children 
cry in company, because they were then carried out. Such 
a man would make a child cry any time. It keeps the old 
man young, and it makes the child wise betimes to have the 
old and young mingle in domestic and social life. There 
are sports that the old may enjoy without loss of dignity, 
and the young always delight in them fourfold if the elder 
people join them heartily. But the stiff, formal, dignified 
style of living is good neither for the parents nor the chil- 
dren. Cheerful familiarity does not lead to disrespect, but 
it does inspire love and confidence, it does encourage obe- 
dience, and fills the house wath sunshine which is good for 
the body as well as for the soul. 

Mr. Canning was Prime Minister of England, and being 
one morning at the house of a nobleman, was urged by his 
friend to step into the nursery and speak to the children. 
He begged to be excused, and assured his friend he could 
not say anything if he should go in. But the nobleman 
would not let him off. " Come in ; the children will remem- 
ber it all their lives that the Prime Minister came into the 
nursery and spoke to them." 

Over-persuaded, Mr. Canning went in with his friend, 
looked at the children to whom he was introduced, and 
for the life of him could not think of a word to say ! He 
turned about, and retired in confusion. He who could sway 
senates with his eloquence, and keep the dinner-table in a 
roar with his wit, could not say a word to children. Mr. 
Emerson was more interested in children than Mr. Canning. 
Few men have a gift for interesting children in conversation 
or public speech. Some talk to them as if they were babes, 
I wish baby-talk could be abolished altogether. Some talk 
to them as if they were a class in metaphysics. " I will 
now give you," said a grave and reverend divine of this city 
to a Sabbath-school, "a summary of this lesson. But per- 
haps you do not know what a summary is; it is a compen- 
dium, an epitome, a synopsis." And so he piled the big 
words upon them till they were nearly smothered. 

One who loves little children finds them interesting al- 



88 IREN^US LETTERS. 

ways, and has no great trouble in making himself interesting 
to them. When I was younger than I am now I met with 
the lines, being the reflections of an old man who has found 
a flock of children sporting in the hay : 

' ' I love to look on a scene like this, 
Of wild and ceaseless play, 
And persuade myself I am not old, 
And my locks are not yet gray." 

And it does one good ; it is good for his health and his 
work, good for his friends, that the old should keep him- 
self fresh by intercourse with the young. Old age will 
come soon enough, with all its infirmities of mind, body, and 
spiAt, when the strong men bow themselves, and a grass- 
hopper is a burden. Happy is he who, like Mr. Emerson, 
is always interested in children. It was a beautiful tribute 
the children paid him when, on his return from Europe, 
they assembled and formed a double line through which he 
walked into his own door. 



HOURS WITH GEORGE RIPLEY. 

It was my purpose, when Mr. Ripley passed away, to have 
the enjoyment of an hour in writing of that remarkable and 
interesting man. 

The perusal of his Life by Mr. Frothingham has revived 
the purpose, and at the same time has furnished me with 
many features of his character which were not familiar to 
me before. Many will see these lines who never heard of 
George Ripley, except as one of the editors of the New York 
Tribune and of " Appletons' Encyclopsedia." They do not 
know that in early life he was a minister in the Unitarian 
connection, and the founder of the Brook Farm community, 
a socialistic association that had a short life near Boston 
some forty years ago. Those who knew Mr. Ripley as an 
elegant man of society and letters, courtly in manners and 



HOURS WITH GEORGE RIPLEY. 89 

scholarly, will be amused as they read of the life that he and 
his associates enjoyed at Brook Farm, where they went, as 
Carlyle said, " to reform the world by raising onions." 

"There was always enough to do. Mr. Ripley liked to 
milk cows, saying that such occupation was eminently favor- 
able to contemplation, particularly when the cow's tail was 
looped up behind. He would also go out in the early morn- 
ing, and help clean the stable, a foul and severe task, which 
it may be presumed he undertook by way of illustrating the 
principle of self-sacrifice, which was at the basis of the ex- 
periment. When convenient, the men did women's work ; 
the General [Mr. Ripley }\ for example, made all the bread 
and cake and some of the pastry." Margaret Fuller was at 
first disgusted by the boorishness of the people. While she 
was talking they yawned, threw themselves on the floor, and 
went out when they had heard enough. But moral refine- 
ment is a higher type of civilization. There was wit, joy, 
good will ; they sought to bear one another's burdens, and 
for a time they had a sort of happiness. It was probably the 
best experiment ever made in trying to accomplish the im- 
practicable. Mr. Ripley went from the pulpit to put into 
actual living the theory he had formed of the meaning of 
the gospel. That it was a total failure, after faithful trial 
under the most favorable circumstances for the experiment, 
is part of the history of modern reform. But Mr. Frothing- 
ham assures us, and we have no doubt of it, that, through all 
the embarrassments of the situation, " Mr. Ripley kept his 
serenity undisturbed. More than that, he was cheerful and 
even gay. No cloud was seen on his face. He had pleasant 
words for all. His voice was musical, his manner bright. 
Thinking, working with hand, head and heart, advising, di- 
recting, talking philosophy with Theodore Parker, talking 
farming with Minot Pratt, writing diplomatic letters, milking 
cows, carrying vegetables to market, cleaning the stable, he 
was still the same sunny-tempered man, true to his ideal, and 
true to himself. His devoted wife toiled and served at his 
side unmurmuringly. For ten hours at a time she has been 
known to labor in the muslin-room. With her hands in the 



90 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

wash-tub, or, on her knees, scrubbing the floor, she would 
still entertain her fellow-workers by her smiling wit." 

It was long after this almost incredible episode in the life 
of Mr. Ripley, and while he was in the successful pursuit of 
letters in New York, that I met him and became deeply in- 
terested in him. This devoted wife of his was dying. A lady 
in the vicinity, hearing of her situation, sent a cross of beau- 
tiful camellias to the dying woman, who was a Roman Cath- 
olic. The cross was suspended where her eyes could tenderly 
rest upon it. When Mr. Ripley returned from his office, he 
saw the cross and asked whence it came. When he was told 
that the wife of a Protestant clergyman, with whose name 
he was familiar, had sent it to Mrs. Ripley, he was much 
affected. He had not thought there could be such sympathy. 
It was soon after this that we became acquainted. I was 
surprised to find him so gentle, loving and childlike. I had 
supposed him to be an unbeliever in the Christian religion. 
His leaving the pulpit to go into a Fourier association I had 
thought an abandonment of faith in the gospel. But I soon 
found that the early thoughts of his heart had hold of him 
still. His wife had accepted, as a solution of the problem of 
life, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, but he 
knew too much for that. The only severe remark I ever 
heard of his makingwas an" expression of profound contempt 
for the religion his wife had embraced. Nor was he satisfied 
with the rationalism of Theodore Parker, or the agnosticism 
of Mr. Frothingham. His mind was at sea, tossed with the 
winds of speculation. He said to me one day : 

" I never look at you without envy." 

When I expressed my surprise that he should make such a 
remark, he added : 

"Your mind seems to be at rest, while I am constantly in- 
quiring." 

Comparing the views of two preachers, the one a rational- 
ist, the other an evangelical man, Mr. Ripley said of the 
latter: " If I were dying I would like to have him come and 
talk to me." 

His biographer says; "After he abandoned the religious 



HOURS WITH GEORGE RIPLEY. 9 1 

beliefs of his youth, he never returned to them, never deplored 
their absence, though a copy of the hymns of Dr. Watts lay 
on his study-table for use." I doubt the accuracy of this 
statement. Perhaps we do not quite understand what is 
meant by the "religious beliefs of his youth." His father 
was Unitarian, his mother Orthodox. He wanted to go to 
Andover to study theology rather than to Cambridge, where 
he went, and thence into the Unitarian ministry. When he 
was forty years old he wrote in a letter to a theological stu- 
dent : " Let your mind be filled and consecrated with the 
heavenly spirit of Christ ; let your youthful energy be blended 
with the meekness and gentleness and wisdom of your Di- 
vine Master." I have good reason to believe that his " early 
belief" was that of his mother; that the views into which he 
afterward drifted did not afford satisfaction in his old age. 
Two of my friends, evangelical ministers and men of the 
highest standing, called upon him on learning that he had 
expressed a desire to see them. Mr. Ripley impressed those 
gentlemen, as he did me, with the thought that he found in 
the theology of Watts's songs the faith on which alone his 
soul had rest. 

In reciting these recollections of a great and excellent man 
whose friendship I enjoyed for many years, I have no other ob- 
ject than to pay a late but cheerful tribute to his pleasant 
memory, and to intimate that the dreams of pliilosophy and the 
deeds of philanthropy afford no solid and sufficient ground for 
peace of spirit when weary feet approach the border-land. 
My belief is that Mr. Ripley saw his " Divine Master "and 
bowed in reverent faith at his feet. That his soul was not at 
rest in the long years of toil through which his teeming brain 
wrought for bread, it is certainly known. And to me there 
is intense sadness in the thought that a life so well spent as 
his did not have, in the midst of its labors and its sorrows, 
the constant blessedness of that peace which passeth knowl- 
edge. Perhaps he had as much of it as any true man has 
who loses faith in his mother's theology. For after all has 
been learned, the old man is a boy again and turns to the 
songs and prayers that he heard when the nursery was his 



92 IREN^US LETTERS. 

divinity school, and his mother the senior professor. Out of 
that seminary he may goto groves of philosophy and halls of 
ethical culture; sit at the feet of wise men and become him- 
self an interpreter of thought ; a founder of schools and 
sects, and fill the world with the records of his inner life and 
his experience in learning how to live. But at last he must 
come back to the simple faith that his first teacher taught 
him. The little child gets the kingdom. 

And so, if I am asked, "Is life worth living?" I answer, 
" Yes, with peace of mind ; without it, no." A religion of 
doubt is worse than the worst that is positive and clear. And 
he who accepts the gospel as he learned it at his mother's 
knee, and in Watts's Divine Songs for Children, may be at 
peace, though the heavens and the earth pass away. 



WHAT IS A GREAT MAN.?* 

What is greatness and how to attain it ; what is a great 
man, and how to become one, are problems of commanding 
interest to young men pursuing a liberal education. There 
are great men who have not had such an education. But 
we do not err when we say that every young man, as he 
resolves to conquer the realms of knowledge and make 
himself master and king in the empire of thought, has 
before him an ideal of greatness which is his goal, his throne 
and kingdom. 

It is a laudable ambition. In these sacred seats and halls 
of sanctified learning, where men come in the dawn of their 
being to train their immortal intellects for high service, it 
were treason to the traditions of Williams College to put 
dishonor on that holy ambition which aspires to the highest 
attainable, and seeks nothing less than the first and best. 

* An address delivered at the Commencement of Williams College, July, 
1883, on the late Rev. Paul A. Chadbourne, D.D., LL.D., ex-president 
of the College. 



WHAT IS A GREAT MAN? 93 

What else led young Garfield from an obscure and distant 
hamlet to this sublime spot among the mountains of New- 
England ? He knew that eagles have their nests among 
these rocks. They are born and reared amid storms and 
crags and perils. And he came to plume the wings that bore 
him on and upward to the summit of American ambition. 

Greatness is not, however, to be measured by position, 
place, or even by the power which the man obtains. This 
country never had in its chief magistrate so great a man as 
it passed by and left to die a private citizen. And Mr. 
Webster, greatest of American statesmen, wrought more 
mightily in shaping the thought of the government, and 
thus the destiny of the nation, than any one man who was 
called to be its President. 

Just thirty years ago, in the British House of Commons, I 
heard a young man, unknown to fame, though then the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, presenting the annual budget, 
or, as we would say, the report of the Secretary of the 
Treasury. He spoke about two hours : pounds, shillings 
and pence were the warp and woof of his address; without 
a note before him he unfolded the expected resources and ex- 
penses of the government for the corning year ; every de- 
partment to the minutest detail was mastered as the simplest 
sum in arithmetic. And when he finished that wonderful 
exhibition I said, "There is the coming man of England." 
And from that day onward his footsteps have been felt and 
seen on sea and land, until the world has no greater states- 
man than Mr. Gladstone. 

These words have been spoken in view of the subject in 
hand, as they lead me to the remark that the elements of 
true greatness were combined in rare proportions and degree 
in Dr. Chadbourne, the late President of Williams College. 
His biography has been condensed in the necrology of the 
past year, a year so memorable for the death of distinguished 
alumni and friends of the college. Were we required to de- 
fine the elements and means of greatness, we would make a 
prescription within the reach of nearly ever^' educated man : 
and we would also find its illustration and proof in the 



94 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

career of Dr. Chadbourne. What men call genius is not a 
miraculous conception. Given a sound mind, with energy 
and perseverance, and the highest attainable eminence is a 
possibility for any man. What makes the greatest difference 
in men is energy, or the want of it. Energy is the ergos en, 
en ergos, the working power within : the engine inside; the 
propelling force by which the machinery is set in motion and 
kept going; in season and out of season, pushing, and al- 
ways pushing, onward and onward ; overcoming every re- 
sistance ; thrusting aside obstacles ; despising temptations ; 
climbing one round of the ladder after another, and then 
taking the shining stairway that leads to the stars, where 
those who, overcome, sit down on the right hand of God. 

This was the ca.reer of President Chadbourne, with no ad- 
ventitious aids of fortune or association. Relying on those 
intellectual endowments which a bountiful God gives abun- 
dantly to his creatures, he laid the foundation of his vast 
attainments in Williams College. What he learned here 
every young man who comes here may learn. What ambi- 
tions stirred his young heart there are now no means of 
finding out. Every upward step in life gave proof that his 
was an aspiring soul. Professor Henry, the late illustrious 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, has left on record 
his opinion — and he was a master in science, a king among 
men — that moral excellence is the highest human attain- 
ment. Dr. Chadbourne, when as yet in the dew of his 
youth, began to build on virtue as the basis of true great- 
ness. To know' everything, to do everything, and to be 
whatever man could be, seem to have been in the range of 
his young ambition. It is not given of God to any man to 
attain all this, and often aiming at too much leads to fail- 
ure in everything. Not so in his experience. Had he 
fastened his immense force of intellect upon one and only 
one department of knowledge, he would easily have sur- 
passed all his contemporaries, and the greatness he achieved 
in many realms of learning would have been so condensed 
in his chosen pursuit that he would have stood forth a giant, 
head and shoulders above his fellows. Our own Dr. Mark 



WHAT IS A GREAT MAN? 95 

Hopkins said of him : " Doing many things, he did them all 
well. What he has done in each position and relation has 
been a decided success." This is the striking figure he 
makes in the history of our college. 

In what science or branch of learning he excelled I do not 
know, but it is fitting to say of him, now that he is dead and 
gone, that as a student in college, as tutor, professor and 
president, here and elsewhere, he \i2& facile princeps — easily 
chief — doing his whole duty with soul, body and spirit ; re- 
solved to do with his might what he had to do, and never to 
admit the possibility of failure. He had physical difficulties 
to contend with that his best friends did not fully under- 
stand. With these he was weighted in the race and battle 
of life. Many would have found in them an excuse for de- 
clining to enter the arena. To him they were incentives to 
higher purpose and more zealous action, knowing how short 
the contest must be, how suddenly it might be finished. But 
with these embarrassments he conquered. To whatever sub- 
ject he applied his acute, penetrating and powerful intellect, 
he went into it and through it, knowing it thoroughly, was 
able to teach it to others, and so became its master and dis- 
penser. His executive force was marvellous. He was so 
willing to do that he could easily do too much. No burdens 
seemed too great, no duties too many. 

It was an error of judgment — perhaps it should be called 
an error of genius — that he was never able to say with Paul, 
whose name he bore, "This one thing I do." He did too 
many things. The measure of success he attained in them 
all seems to contradict the criticism. But there is no reason 
to doubt that if his life had been devoted to the pursuit of 
business affairs he would have been distinguished among 
great men of wealth. Had he entered civil life he would 
have taken rank among the great leaders of men. He 
touched both these spheres, and made demonstrations of his 
powers. But we know and honor him to-day for his success 
as a teacher of science and the arts ; a sagacious and skilful 
officer of the college whose name adds lustre to the roll of 
great men who have left the stamp of their intellectual and 



96 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

moral characteristics upon this institution. And when we 
contemplate the attainments which a few of the great stu- 
dents of our own and forme^r times have made, we are com- 
pelled to adopt the thought of another and say, " We seem 
to be asleep at the base of these monuments of study, and 
scarcely awaken to admire." The ceaseless activity of Dr. 
Chadbourne always reminds me of the remark of Ferguson : 
"The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame of 
a meteor, shines only while his motion continues ; the mo- 
ments of rest and obscurity are the same." 

Admirably that illustration presents the career of our de- 
parted friend. He was never at rest. His motion was per- 
petual, and hence the lustre of his character was always 
shining. 

And so on the wing the arrow of Death, the unerring 
archer, pierced his side. He fell in the midst of his work ; 
fell suddenly. Stricken down away from home in the midst 
of a journey, lying in a place of business in the midst of a 
great city, yet there when the mortal agony seized him he 
pursued the work that he came to do. It was so like him. 

And then the bed of death was changed into a triumphal 
car; angels came down to escort him upward on his shining 
way ; visions of celestial glory appeared, and he talked with 
God as friend to friend. His vigorous intellect, illumined 
with a light that "never was on land or sea," solved mighty 
problems that aforetime had been to him great mysteries ; 
and the infinite verities of eternity became palpable to his 
senses, as he lay like Jacob beneath the stars, beholding the 
gates of heaven open to his mortal eyes. 

Nobody dies till his work is done. And then it is well to 
die. 

The tenderness of wedded and filial love ministered to 
him in those hours when flesh and heart were failing ; wiped 
the death-sweat from his noble brow, kissed his breath away, 
and wafted his ransomed spirit to the bosom of his Lord and 
Redeemer. 

It was a grand, good life. His was a blessed and happy 
dying. Let my last end be like his ! 



DR. EDWIN F. HATFIELD. 97 

DR. EDWIN F. HATFIELD. 

THE HIDING-PLACE OF HIS GREAT POWER. 

In this city are several circles, societies or coteries of min- 
isters who meet at stated times for social improvement and 
enjoyment. When death comes into the company, it is 
common in the one to which I belong to spend the time of 
the next meeting in talking about the deceased, reciting 
pleasant memories, making a study of him that we may get 
all the good we can from him, now that he is dead. 

In this way we studied Dr. E. F. Hatfield when we were 
last together, and a very profitable time it was : very pleas- 
ant also. That is one of the charms of our intercourse. 
Christian friendship, when the delights of learning, wit and 
good-fellowship are added, is one of the highest pleasures 
that earth affords, and is about as " near to that above" as 
we shall get till we sit down in the Father's house on high. 
I have been reciting since I came in from the meeting the 
many pleasant reminiscences to which I have listened, and 
the pleasure will be lengthened if I write you briefly of them 
before I go to sleep. 

You perhaps have heard of Harlan Page. He was a 
wonderfully useful layman in New York fifty years ago. He 
was the father, it might almost be said, of them who work 
for individual souls ; that is, he made a business of winning 
men to the Saviour, one by one, and very hard must be the 
heart that would not yield to the prayers and tears and 
sweet persuasions of that lovely man of God. He fell in 
with young Hatfield, and fastened himself unto him with 
cords of love, so that to escape was impossible and he 
yielded himself a " captive willing to be bound." Then he 
was easily persuaded to the holy ministry, through college 
and seminary, laying a deep foundation for usefulness. He 
was not half fledged, but was thoroughly furnished for his 
high calling. 

7 



98 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

Now I am about to say something that will to some ap- 
pear extravagant. New York never had a pastor in it whose 
ministry was more fruitful and permanently useful than that 
of Dr. Hatfield. 

There are bright and glorious traditions of his success in 
the pulpit, that to those who receive them only as tradi- 
tions seem incredible, so utterly unknown now in the 
churches are such scenes as were common in his pastorate. 
There was fervor and logic in his preaching, and it is sadly 
true that logic does not often get afire. When it does, the 
best kind of preaching comes. Some of the brethren while 
speaking of Dr. Hatfield referred to one of his contempora- 
ries who reasoned mightily out of the Scriptures and was a 
giant in intellect, but had few souls for seals of his ministry. 
But they wisely said we must not measure a man's useful- 
ness by the numbers whom he counts as converts. One 
soweth and another reapeth. Dr. Hatfield did both, and 
there are few who reach the understanding and the heart 
also with so much effect. That is the great lesson to be- 
learned from his life and labors. Being a man of cool, calm 
judgment, strong, good sense, without fanaticism, a walking 
encyclopedia of facts and statistics, a sort of multiplication- 
table on foot, an antiquarian in taste, fond of old books and 
pamphlets and manuscripts, delving in lore as dry as dust, 
he nevertheless was full of juice, the marrow of the Scrip- 
ture, the love of the gospel and the desire of saving souls. 
This is a rare combination. Few men ever saw such a 
blending of attributes and such a result when the man came 
forth from the crucible melted and moulded for the Master's 
use. 

We have not yet hit upon the hiding of his power. For I 
do not fear to use the word power as applied to this wise 
winner of souls. He was a devout man. Very holy he was. 
No one could be led by him in prayer without feeling him- 
self led very near to the throne of grace. Thus he had with 
him always the power of the Holy Spirit. Not by might, 
not with the excellency of man's wisdom, not by the will of 



DR. ED WIN F. HA TFIELD. 99 

man, but by the Spirit of God, was this man made mighty 
to the pulling down of strongholds of sin and of building 
up the church. 

There is no pastor in this city now whose aisles are habit- 
ually crowded, year in and year out, with sinners asking 
what they must do to be saved. His were. And not only 
in the prime and vigor of his life, but even down to old 
age. When he went to the west from the east side of the 
town, at a time of life when his enthusiasm, if not his natu- 
ral force, might be abated, the signs from heaven were as on 
the corner of Broome and Ridge streets, when the fire of 
youth burned in his glowing breast. Every year a hundred 
or more enlisted under his banner, and endured to the end. 

What he was, every well-educated, pious preacher may be. 
His success did not depend on adventitious circumstances 
which justify others in despair. He took hold of his work 
with both hands, and compelled success. This is genius. 
Why was he prince among clerks, the chief clerk, the ablest 
and best man for figures of arithmetic that the church has 
discovered in our day.-* Why was he an accomplished ec- 
clesiastic, master of the minutest details of canon law and 
order.? Why so familiar with the dates and facts of history, 
so that it was dangerous to differ with him and fatal to assail 
his positions? Because he gave his whole mind to every- 
thing he put his hand to. Sincere, honest, without guile, 
pertinacious and of strong will, he knew that everything 
was possible that God would direct him to do. 

Now, take such a man as that and put him in the pulpit 
in such a city as this, and what will come of it ? God with 
him, inspiring him with energy, zeal, love, warmth, already 
full of truth, sound learning, vast reading, and strong sense, 
he throws himself at and into the people, and they hear as 
for their lives. I believe in the supernatural. Every new 
birth is a new creation. The age of miraculous conversion 
is not passed. It did not close when the modern prophets 
of our Israel went up to their glory. God is with his minis- 
ters, in his church, and the people will see wonders and 



lOO IREN^US LETTERS. 

signs when the Lord shall come to Zion with the outpouring 
of his Spirit. 

And thus he wrought by and through this remarkable 
man, and made him a burning and shining light in his day, 
and a rich blessing to the church. 

His last days and years were full of peace. To know him 
best and love him most, you should have seen him in the 
midst of his well-appointed, well-ordered, beautiful house 
and home. I love to see a good man comfortable. It is 
pleasant to see a man of letters, culture, taste and piety sur- 
rounded as Dr. Hatfield was with all the good things of this 
life ; in his magnificent library with its luxurious furniture — 
his wife, ere she went to her Lord and his, enjoying it with 
him, and sons and daughters grown up to be his pride and 
joy : in such a delightful atmosphere he was at his best, 
always busy with his pen, abounding in useful and pleasing 
labor, gentle, smiling, loving, and seeking most of all the 
welfare of Zion which he prized. And so his life was 
rounded and complete. The church that he loved called 
him to its chief seat, and he ruled well as he had long well 
served, and then he came back loaded with honors, to the 
bosom of his family so dearly loved, to lie down and die. It 
was a good, grand, full life. No suspicion of wrong in deed 
or word makes dim the brightness of his spotless name. 
When his funeral was over, and his family and friends and 
liis brother-ministers had returned from the church, a few 
old, long-time-ago parishioners remained by his coffin : they 
were some of those whom he had turned to righteousness in 
their youth, and now, while his crown was waiting for his 
stars, they lingered to print the tokens of their undying love 
on his serene and marble brow. Love survives the grave. 
It is immortal. 

Blessed is he who lives such a life : lives in the hearts of 
them whom he has saved : lives in the everlasting light of 
God : as one who has converted souls, and has won many 
sons and daughters unto glory. 

Friend of my life, companion of my age, my elder brother, 
on your good name be peace ! 



A MODEL RURAL PASTOR. lOI 

A MODEL RURAL PASTOR. 

THE REV, JOSEPH M. OGDEN, D.D.* 

" Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 
Nor e'er had changed nor wished to change his place." 

When the good George Herbert, two hundred and fifty-two 
years ago, would write " the Country Parson, his character 
and rule of holy life," he said : " I have resolved to set down 
the form and character of a true pastor, that 1 may have a 
mark to aim at, which also I will set as high as I can, since 
he shoots higher that threatens the moon than he that aims 
at a tree." 

Were I set to do the work which Herbert did, it were a help 
to me to have a model, that when he was drawn and finished 
it could be said that is a man, a minister, a pastor; not an 
angel, not perfect, but such a man as every pastor might be 
and ought to be. George Herbert, it is written of him, made 
himself the model of his " Country Parson." God forbid that 
such a thought should ever cross my mind. But when I was 
a country parson among the Highlands of the Hudson, in a 
region of ideal beauty, where the loveliest of rivers washes 
the foot of lofty mountains, in the midst of a people who 
would have plucked out their eyes for me, there came one 
day a stranger, a young minister from New Jersey, taking a 
brief vacation from his pastoral duties and visiting friends 
who were my friends also. We spent the day in climbing the 
mountains that look down upon the Newburg bay and the 
West Point scenery, unrivalled for mingled grandeur and 
beauty; and when we parted we knew that we were no more 
strangers, but brothers and friends. This is a world of 
change, and not very long after this pleasant visit my lot was 
changed and my tent was pitched a short day's march from 
his. And the friendship begun in that mountain ramble 

* Died February 13, 1884. 



102 IREN^US LETTERS. 

rolled right on like the river by which it was born, never 
interrupted by a breath of doubt or fear, until now, after half 
a century, he has ceased from his labors and has gone to be 
with his Lord and mine. 

His parish was wholly rural : the most of his flock were in- 
telligent, prosperous farmers ; solid, substantial people who 
read their Bibles, prayed with their families, were faithful and 
constant in their attendance on the preaching of the word, 
and gave their pastor a very moderate support and no more. 
When he first came to m.e, he was only half furnished and 
fitted for the charge of a country congregation. Though the 
college and the seminary at Princeton had given him all the 
intellectual finish and furniture required for the life he was 
to lead, yet I could truthfully say to him, and did say to him : 
" One thing thou lackest." Among the lady-teachers in the 
Sabbath-school under my care he found what was lacking. 
The people built a neat parsonage for their pastor and his 
bride, and they were soon settled in it with the work and the 
care, the joys and the trials of pastoral life before them. 

His first great duty was to preach the gospel ; and in order 
to preach well he studied well. His sermons cost him great 
labor. He often told me that he could not write fluently. 
But the want of facility was made up by that diligence which 
maketh rich. Therefore he never took a half-baked cake and 
crude oil to feed his flock with. Every sermon, if indeed a 
work of art, was wrought out with thought and prayer. His 
books were not many, but were well read. Keeping abreast 
of the age, alert to discover new phases of thought, and able 
to discern between the true and the new, he was prepared to 
teach his people the doctrine of God, and to lead them to 
fountains of living waters. Nor would it be just to say that 
he was a better pastor than preacher. When he was instruct- 
ing his people in the knowledge of divine things and they 
were reverently listening to the word, it seemed that his mis- 
sion was to teach and preach, to point to heaven and lead the 
way; for he was an example to the flock. But take a seat 
with him in the parson's chaise, and go among the homes of 
the congregation, and the power of the pastor appeared. 



A MODEL RURAL PASTOR. IO3 

That smile was reflected in the faces of the household. The 
children climbed on his knees. His voice was soft and 
tender, and his manners so simple and cordial that the hum- 
blest knew they had in him a brother and a friend. He made 
each visit a pastoral visit. He counselled and encouraged 
them. He prayed with them. Cheerful and devout, religion 
on his lips was lovely and of good repute. They knew how 
thoroughly sincere and godly was his life, and that his con- 
versation was in heaven as well as in their homes. 

And so flowed on his life and theirs, pastor and people. 
Neither sought any change while health and strength for 
duty were granted to him, their father, comforter, instructor 
and guide. He ministered to them in their sorrows. He 
baptized their children. Young lovers received his blessing 
in marriage. The dying bed and the grave witnessed his 
ministries of peace. When the infirmities of age began to 
burden him he begged to be relieved from the care of the 
flock, and they gave him help. But he dwelt among them, 
his gray head a crown of glory, and his unbent form a power 
and blessing. His life was a constant sermon. 

And that sweet home which so often opened its doors to 
me when, wearied with city toil, I sought it as a Bethany — 
how was it there ? Five precious children crowded the snug 
parsonage, and grew up in loveliness, purity, virtue, knowl- 
edge and usefulness. All lived to be the joy of their parents, 
the darlings of the people, the delight and stay of those who 
cared for them in their infancy. Death never crossed the 
threshold of that happy home till last week. 

Eighty years had this blessed man of God lived on the 
earth. Fifty-six of those eighty years he had lived in the 
hearts of his one only congregation. He rose in the morning 
as usual, and having broken bread with his family, led them 
as was his wont to the altar and offered the morning sacrifice, 
as the prophet and priest of the household. And then he 
was not, for God took him. He passed away into the light 
of a brighter morning, into the company of patriarchs and 
apostles and prophets, and of Him who redeemed them all 
with his most precious blood. 



104 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

The church in which he had so often preached Christ cru- 
cified was filled to overflowing with a great congregation, 
assembled to mingle their tears and praises at his funeral. 
From the whole country-side they came. Everybody knew 
him, honored him, loved him, blessed God for him, and wept 
that they should see him no more. 

Twenty-six ministers of the gospel were among the mourn- 
ers. Six of them testified to his noble life, and commended 
his family and people to God in prayer. 

His four sons — O holy service, so fitting and so beautiful ! 
— his four sons bore the body of their father from the church 
to the grave ; their mother and only sister following. 

Among the people he served so long and so well, he rests 
from his labors, and his works do follow him. 

Joseph M. Ogden, D.D., my friend of many a year; sweet 
be thy sleep till the morning of the resurrection! Very 
pleasant hast thou been unto me, and we will not be long 
divided. 



HONORABLE AND HONEST JOHN HILL. 

From the church and the multitude in and around it at 
the funeral of the Hon. John Hill,t I went to the railroad 
station. A lad ten or a dozen years old was standing on the 
platform, to whom I said : 

" Have you been to the funeral ?" 

"Yes, sir," he answered ; " Mr. Hill was a friend of mine." 

There was something odd in a boy so young speaking so 
of an elderly man and a member of Congress, and the lad 
continued his remarks as though he thought I might doubt 
the fact he had stated : " He used to send me papers and 
things from Washington ;" and now I understood the force 
of the eulogies which had been pronounced upon him a few 



t The Hon. John Hill, of New Jersey, died July 24, 1884. 



HONORABLE AND HONEST JOHN HILL. 10$ 

minutes before in the crowded sanctuary whence they were 
even then bearing his body to the grave. But some explana- 
tion is needful for those who do not know the story of John 
Hill. 

In the year 1821 he was born in Catskill, N. Y., and on 
coming of age he went to Boonton, N. J., where he engaged 
in business. He had no other education than the ordinary 
schools of the country afford. But his mind was vigorous, 
clear and rapid in its decisions. He was immediately re- 
ceived into the church on his coming to Boonton ; within a 
month was made an elder, and soon took the superintend- 
ence of the Sunday-school, which he retained with ardent 
attachment and zeal until he died. His fellow-citizens early 
saw the material of a statesman in the man, and they thrust 
him into local offices one after another, then into the Legis- 
lature, where he was Speaker of the House, and at length 
they sent him to Congress, and again and again they re- 
turned him till he had served three terms of two years each. 
This is the briefest outline of his public career, but it is only 
an outline. If we were to fill up the sketch, we would see a 
humble, modest. God-fearing and man-loving man, diligent 
in business, fervent in spirit, serving God, the church and 
the country with singleness of heart, intent only on the good 
of his fellow-men. It is said of Washington that Providence 
made him childless that he might be the father of his coun- 
try. Mr. Hill had no children, but his whole life was conse- 
crated to the welfare of the young, in whom everywhere and 
always he took a fatherly interest. His devotion to the 
Sunday-school work at home and abroad was extraordinary. 
Associations for the improvement of young men were ear- 
nestly promoted by his eloquence. He was an ardent advo- 
cate of temperance. And it may in truth be said that no 
good work failed to receive his strong support. And the 
people loved, honored and trusted him. They knew him. 
His career as a citizen proves that the wiles of the politician 
are not essential to success, even in these days falsely called 
degenerate. Mr. Hill's greatness lay in his goodness. His 
constituents believed in him and were never disappointed. 



I06 IREN^US LETTERS. 

True, there are in all political parties those who prefer for 
their leaders men of pliable morals and easy virtue. In 
England the greatest of modern statesmen is so true to his 
convictions of what is right, that some of his own party are 
afraid lest he will stand too firmly to his principles when 
they would* like to sell out. But in England and in this 
country, especially in the rural districts, in the long-run the 
honest and upright man will win the support of the people. 
Not always, as very modern history proves. Mr. Hill won 
the prefix of honest to his name, and the title of honor- 
able which is given to everybody who gets into a Legisla- 
ture was not so descriptive and distinguishing as the other. 
And I have chosen to give him both titles, and to call him 
"Honorable and Honest John Hill." 

An eagle soaring to his nest in the crags near the summit 
of a lofty mountain found a worm in the nest — a worm that 
belonged in the soil of the valley far below. " How came 
you here ?" said the eagle. "I crawled here," answered the 
worm. That is one way to get up in the world. Sometimes 
a crawling, dirty politician makes his way up the steeps of 
office, leaving the slime along the path to mark the course 
by which he made his way to the height of place and power. 
, There is another way — the way the eagle knows. With his 
eye on the sun, and a heart of fire, he beats the air with his 
wings and rises in the clear, bright light of heaven. Tem- 
pests do not dismay him. Opposition stimulates to nobler 
daring. His course is right onward and upward till he 
plants his feet on the battlements of the everlasting hills. 
So rose to political eminence the Honorable and Honest John 
Hill. No enemy ever hinted that he won his ends by trick 
or stratagem, by bribery or fraud. The sun in heaven could 
have been turned from his course as soon as he. Firm as a 
rock, yet gentle as a child, he rose on his own inherent 
power, the power of goodness. No storm depressed him or 
deterred his upward progress, and he was still ascending 
when the Master of Assemblies called him to come up 
higher. 

He was sent to London to the great International Conven- 



HONORABLE AND HONEST JOHN HILL. lO/ 

tion of Christian young men. It became known to the 
meeting and in the city that an ex-member of Congress, a 
plain man of the people, but very eloquent, was there from 
America, a genuine son of the soil, and when he was called 
out to speak it is reported that such an ovation was given 
him as no other member received. The enthusiastic applause 
of a vast assembly must have sent strange thrills of emotion 
through this simple-minded man as he thought of the way 
by which he had come from his youth at the foot of the 
Catskill Mountains to this proud pre-eminence in the chief 
city of the Christian world. 

There is not in the annals of our country a more beautiful 
model for the young man. It is not an unapproachable and 
inimitable example like Washington. We do not see him 
gifted with extraordinary powers of intellect, polished and 
enriched by the higher education of the university. He was 
a plain, simple man. What he was seems to be within the easy 
attainment of any one. Therefore he is a beautiful model. 
Therefore young men whom he loved may rejoice in the 
light of his life and tread readily in his footsteps if they will. 
In Congress he sought only to be useful. And every one who 
uses a postal-card or puts a two-cent stamp on a letter may 
thank JoJm Hill, as the English people thank Roivland Hill, 
for his successful efforts to reduce the postage throughout 
the land. 

What a loss is such a man in such a time as this ! To 
wade through the mire of politics without soiling one's shoes 
is as impossible as it was for Shadrach and his friends to 
walk in the furnace without the smell of fire on their gar- 
ments. And if we could see the invisible, we would have 
seen by the side of John Hill One like unto the Son of man ! 
Therefore his hands and his raiment in the heat and moil of 
political life were as spotless as the white robes in which he 
was dressed for the grave. 



I08 IRENMUS LETTERS. 



THE SHEPHERD OF NEWBURG. 

On Thursday, November 13, 1884, at the celebration of the 
one hundredth birthday of the First Presbyterian Church, 
Newburg, N. Y., the remarks below were made when a tab- 
let was unveiled in memory of the late Rev. John Johnston, 
D.D. 

He was born in 1778, six years before the birth of this 
church. His father was an intelligent farmer, who had been 
a school-teacher. He lived in Montgomery, in Ulster (now 
Orange) County, New York. The lad worked on the farm, 
and when he was fourteen years old, and had been employed 
awhile in a store, he decided with his father's approbation to 
get an education. He was prepared to enter college when 
his father died. This sad event crushed, his hopes ; but his 
mother was equal to the occasion, and resolved to accom- 
plish the work. From the herd on the farm she selected 
some cattle, and the student-boy, with a drover to aid him, 
set off through the country to sell them for money to sup- 
port him in college. They came to Newburg, crossed the 
river, and going down into Westchester County disposed of 
the cattle. 

He lodged at Yorktown, and waking early he heard two 
boys in a bed near him discussing the great question, "Can 
God see us in the dark ?" That conversation led him to 
serious reflections that shaped his course in life, and his eter- 
nal destiny.* 

Returning home with his money, he was soon on his way 
to Princeton and an education. This was in October of the 
year 1799. 

George Washington died December 13, 1799, only a few 



* Many long years afterwards Dr. Johnston, attending Synod in New York 
City, dined with the Rev. Dr. Potts and a large party of ministers and 
elders. At table Dr. J. related this incident, and one of the elders said, " I 
was one of those boys." 



THE SHEPHERD OF NEW BURG. IO9 

weeks after this farmer's boy entered college. The president 
of the college delivered a funeral oration at Trenton : and 
the young man walked ten miles to hear it, stood up in the 
crowd three hours, and walked ten miles back, having had 
nothing to eat during the day. Yet it was no small part of 
a young man's education to hear a funeral oration on the 
death of George Washington. Heaven send us another 
Washington, and to God shall be the glory ! 

He completed his course with honor, and was afterwards 
elected tutor in the college, performing the duties of that 
office so as to secure the respect of the officers and students 
also. 

The voice of God which he heard by the boys in York- 
town continued to call him, and he desired to preach the 
everlasting gospel. Beyond the Alleghany Mountains was 
a great divine whose fame as a teacher of divinity had come 
over the hills to the college at Princeton. There was no 
school of theology there at the time, nor until ten years 
after. Coming back to Montgomery to the home of his 
mother, the question of the ministry was discussed in the 
councils of the family. A young lady in the neighborhood 
joined the council, for she was deeply interested in its de- 
cision. She had already promised to be the wife of this ar- 
dent young man, and the question intimately concerned 
their future. Should he go away for a term of years, com- 
plete his studies and then return to claim his bride, and with 
her begin life's great work as a minister of the gospel? 
Many elements of doubt and fear entered into that discus- 
sion. There were no public conveyances then like our 
steamboats and railroads. Pittsburg was farther off than 
London is now. Poverty, illness, change of purpose, were all 
possible. Would time work no change in man or maiden ? 
If they parted now for three years, would they ever be united 
to share the burdens and joys of wedded life.'' They voted 
unanimously that he should go. Mounted on a little horse, 
his whole wardrobe in the saddle-bags under him, he rode 
down into New Jersey, througli it to Pennsylvania ; passing 
Philadelphia, Lancaster, Columbia, Chambersburg, Bedford 



no IREN^US LETTERS. 

and Somerset, he crossed the mountains, a solitary traveller. 
"Charmed witli the magnificent views of the hills and the 
Juniata Valley, he received impressions of grandeur and love- 
liness that were fresh in his memory fifty years afterwards. 
At Canonsburg he found Dr. McMillan, the apostle of the 
West, at whose feet he was to sit. But his course was more 
of practice than of study. His teacher was a great revival 
preacher, and was continually called off to scenes of high re- 
ligious interest, into which he plunged, taking all his stu- 
dents with him. At the end of a year and a half his money 
was exhausted, and he crossed the mountains again on horse- 
back, found employment as a teacher in Maryland, replen- 
ished his purse, went home after an absence of three years, 
found all right there and in the neighborhood, studied one 
year more at Princeton, and was licensed to preach the gos- 
pel in October, 1805. 

The church in Newburg was at that time connected with 
one at New Windsor. He was called to the united charge. 
Having been married to the woman he loved, he entered on 
his labors, and was ordained on the 5th of August, 1807. 
That ministry continued without interruption during the full 
term of his long and useful life. 

To pursue the history of his ministry in the city of New- 
burg (after New Windsor set up for itself) would be to 
rehearse the record of a pure, godly man whose walk and 
conversation were without spot and blameless, and whose 
life was one long testimony to the power of simple goodness. 
He was the most like a good child of any educated man I 
ever saw. It was a blessedness of his that he found that 
patient girl in Montgomery waiting for him after so many 
years. She was a mother to him as well as a wife. He has 
said playfully at my table when pressed to take this or that, 
" My wife does not allow it." It was her prudence and en- 
ergy that caused the barrel of meal and the cruet of oil to 
hold out, when but for her a miracle would have been re- 
quired to feed him. 

Oliver Goldsmith had him to sit for his portrait when he 
drew the picture of the village pastor who " watched and 



THE SHEPHERD OF NEWBURG. Ill 

wept, who pray'd and felt for all." He rarely preached a 
sermon without weeping. But he was sincere. He felt all 
that he said, and when pleadingwith sinners to be reconciled 
to God, and with saints to be more like the Saviour, tears 
would flow and his voice would break so that he could 
scarcely proceed with his discourse. 

This was not weakness, for he was not a weak man; he 
had immense energy, industry and endurance ; he went about 
doing good, with vitality and perseverance rarely equalled in 
the ministry. I have seen and heard him when he was greatly 
excited. It was in his own church when the great disruption 
took place at Synod in the year 1838. It was agreed that the 
Synod must be broken asunder, but how should it be done.? 
"I go," exclaimed Dr. Johnston, "with the men who are 
known as of my school ; I cast my lot in with them : and let 
my right arm drop from my shoulder if I do not stand by 
them in this hour of peril !" 

There was in Newburg in old times an association of men 
who cherished the infidel sentiments of the French Revolu- 
tion, and sought to propagate them on American soil. Dr. 
Johnston had their names in his note-book, and he kept a 
record of their lives and deaths. Both were miserable. In- 
temperance, suicide, violence of some kind for the most part 
sent them out of the world ; few of them died in peace, in 
their beds. He did not repeat their names, for, thank God, 
it is not respectable to have infidel ancestors, and to per- 
petuate the memory of the dead would pain the living. But 
he was wise in dealing with the worst of them, and the un- 
believer, as truly as the Christian, had a place in his heart. 

To have walked forty-seven years in one community, iden- 
tified with every public movement, standing up bravely 
against iniquity in high places and low, his counsel sought 
for continually and his opinion and advice being freely and 
honestly given, and to have borne himself under all circum- 
stances, religious and secular, above reproach or suspicion, 
is an achievement which the grace of God and his own good 
sense enabled him to accomplish. He could say with Paul, 
" I have fought a good fight ;" and there was never a man in 



112 IREN^US LETTERS. 

Newburg or elsewhere who could take away his crown of a 
good name. ' 

He was a friend of my youth and my father's friend, and I 
count it no light privilege, after both of them have been dead, 
lo, these many years, to take a part in this expression of es- 
teem for the memory of him who being dead yet speaketh. 
Long ago, when he first entered within the veil, a white stone 
was given to him with a new name written thereon. To-day 
we set up in this holy place a white stone with his name in- 
scribed upon it. Long ago he expressed astonishment that 
he who once kept his father's sheep was raised up to be a 
shepherd of the flock of God, to rank with illustrious men in 
the government of the church and its institutions of learn- 
ing. Now he sits with the greatest and the best of all past 
ages, and with Jesus, the Mediator, whose church he loved 
and served so long and well. We set up this stone to tell 
the generations who come after us what a noble, blessed, 
faithful pastor fed this flock through the first half of the 
nineteenth century, that they may hold in honor perpetual 
the name of Dr. John Johnston. 



A GREAT AND GOOD SURGEON. 

In the city of Paris, when I was about to set off on a jour- 
ney to the north of Europe, Dr. J. Marion Sims gave me his 
visiting-card, writing on it the name of a young physician in 
Stockholm. When I presented the card to the young doctor 
in the north he welcomed me with exuberant expressions, 
and affirmed that to be a friend of Dr. Sims was the highest 
commendation one could enjoy. And this led me to a knowl- 
edge of the fame and usefulness of Dr. Sims in countries he 
had never seen, and in cities where it was enough to make 
the success of any practitioner to be known as a pupil of Dr. 
Sims, one who had been to Paris and learned personally the 
science and art of that peculiar line of surgery which made 



A GREAT AND GOOD SURGEON. II3 

Dr. Sims the great benefactor of woman. In other northern 
cities I found that the new method of ministering to the 
afflicted and curing disease that had hitherto baffled human 
skill was now in rapidly growing demand, and I heard the 
name of Marion Sims pronounced with grateful admiration 
in various strange tongues and with such curious accentua- 
tions as would have been wholly unintelligible had I not 
known who was talked about. 

I was much with Dr. Sims in Paris, having known him 
while in New York and labored with him in his herculean 
efforts to found the Woman's Hospital of this city, of which 
he was the inventor. Mrs. Doremus, of blessed memory, 
told me the story of the hospital, all of which she saw and 
a great part of which she was; and Dr. Sims, of whom the 
same should be said, only adding, the greatest part of which 
he was, told me the same story. I was familiar with the facts 
as they transpired at the time of the hospital's conception 
and birth. The odium theologiciim is a vice with which a 
clergyman ought to be familiar from his abundant opportu- 
nities to see it, even if he escapes the effects of it in his own 
experience. But it is no more abundant, malignant and in- 
jurious than the same evil in the ranks of any other profes- 
sion or calling in life and society. It is human nature. And 
there is human nature, in a very unsanctified form, in all the 
walks of men. As I rode with Dr. Sims in his carriage while 
he was pursuing his rounds in the pursuit of a practice which 
was then and there yielding him fifty thousand dollars for 
only a part of the year, he gave me the story of his boyhood 
and youth in Alabama, his struggles, his studies, his discov- 
eries, and triumphs, all of which are now recorded in a me- 
moir written by his own hand, and left when he died last 
year. It is just now published by the Appletons, and his 
troops of friends in the South and the North, in England 
and France, will read it as the true romance of life, more 
strange than the wildest fiction, coming home to the warm- 
est place in the heart, and stirring the blood in the lofti- 
est chambers of the imagination. He had the heart of a 
woman and the head of a man. If the love of wife and chil- 



114 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

dren is weakness, he was one of the weakest men in the world. 
At his own table he always sat by the side of his wife, as if he 
were a young lover who could not bear to sit at arm's length 
or at the other end of the table. Returning home from a 
wearisome day or night of professional anxious toil, he found 
refreshment and solace where the purest and highest joy 
abides, in the only bliss that escaped the fall. It was some- 
thing wonderful to see a man who was at that very time the 
minister of mercy in the families of the high and mighty, 
the rich and titled, of royalty itself, all showering favors 
upon him enough to turn the brain of only common clay, but 
with the playfulness of a boy and the loveliness of a girl 
sunning himself in the smiles and caresses of those dearer to 
him than wealth or fame. As I intimated before, the pro- 
fessional oditim was a burden that weighed upon him when 
he broke out in a fresh field and wrought marvels of scien- 
tific skill which astonished the world. His entrance into the 
practice of surgery in Paris is more brilliant than that of the 
great tragedian who takes a play-going city by storm. Dr. 
Sims's fame had preceded him, and he was invited by the 
most renowned surgeons in the world to perform the most 
delicate and difficult operations in their critical presence. 
He could not speak a word of French. Nelaton, Huguier, 
Denonvilliers and others attended to look on while this for- 
eign surgeon for the first time took the knife in hand in 
Paris. It proved a dark day, and the light was very bad. 
He had never worn spectacles in an operation. Dr. Nelaton 
was so anxious to see all he could that he would sometimes 
thrust his head between the operator and the patient. Dr. 
Sims put on his spectacles, did his work faithfully, bravely, 
triumphantly. The patient lived, and was well in a week. 
Dr. Nelaton's name is familiar to all men of the medical and 
surgical profession. He was the Emperor's physician, and if 
I remember correctly he became insane and died in a re- 
treat. He was so delighted with Dr. Sims's astonishing skill, 
that he went off to the south of France and returned with "a 
young, beautiful, rich and accomplished lady" who required 
a surgical operation of exceeding delicacy; without it she 



A CHEAT AND GOOD SURGEON. Ilg 

must die, with it there was scarcely a chance that she could 
Hve. Dr. Sims gave his opinion that she was in the reach of 
aid. Dr. Nelaton asked him to take the case. The tragic 
scene that followed must be described in scientific terms, 
and this is no place for such a description. Several of the 
most illustrious of the faculty were present, all ready to as- 
sist if required. One of them administered chloroform to 
the patient, and the work was begun. It proceeded forty 
minutes, when it was evident the patient was dead ! Dr. 
Nelaton with perfect composure ordered the head to be low- 
ered so that it would hang down while the feet were raised. 
It was a long time before any signs of returning life were 
visible. Dr. Sims said to Dr. Nelaton, " Our patient is dead 
you may as well give it up." Dr. Nelaton never lost hope, 
but persevered for twenty minutes : three times was this pro- 
cess made necessary by the stopping of the heart's action, 
which was again continued. " The life of this lovely wo- 
man," said Dr. Sims, " was saved." The surgical operation 
was then completed and the patient was cured. 

These cases were repeated again and again. The great sur- 
geon was summoned from distant cities. His fees were often 
very large, but never exorbitant ; he told me of one instance 
where he named a sum that to a layman sounded quite suf- 
ficient, but the nobleman for whose family he had gone from 
Paris to England was not satisfied and added one thousand 
dollars to the sum. Like others of his profession he per- 
formed an immense amount of gratuitous service to the 
poor. No profession is more lavish of its bounty to the poor, 
none are greater benefactors to their fellow-men, than physi- 
cians. May God reward them for what they do in secret, 
and the blessings of many ready to perish come on their 
heads ! 

In the Woman's Hospital in this city stands a beautiful 
bust of Dr. Sims, in white marble, given by Mrs. Russell 
Sage, a fit memorial of the remarkable man whose greatest 
and best monument is the hospital itself. No figures of 
arithmetic will ever compute the sum of comfort and relief 
to woman of which that house has been and will be the 



Il6 I REN ALUS LETTERS. 

source. Toward it the eyes of suflFering women in all parts 
of this wide country turn ; for there men skilled in surgery 
wait to minister to them, and noble women foster it with 
their gifts of gold and healing balms. I wish that a pure 
white marble statue of Mrs. Doremus, stooping under the 
weight of holy labors and many years, yet radiant with immor- 
tal youth and heavenly love, — an image of charity born of 
God, — stood just within its door. 



THE LATE REV. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D.D.* 

A MINGLED sense of sorrow and of triumph is the strange 
emotion of the hour, when earth and heaven meet to yield 
and take a precious trust. Earth loses : heaven gains. 

The right hand lies listless on the breast. The eloquent 
tongue is speechless. The warm, loving heart is cold and 
still. 

But this is only to our mortal seeing. In the infinite be- 
yond, the right hand waves a palm-branch and casts a crown 
at the foot of the throne. The tongue sings the song of 
songs and shouts Hallelujah ! The heart swells with rap- 
ture ineffable ; its joy is full and immortal. 

A widow and two sons weep that he is no more to be the 
object of their tender solicitude and loving care. The church 
mourns that a prince has fallen in Israel. The city sorrows 
at the loss of one of her eldest sons, who has walked her 
streets with spotless garments for eighty years, to bless and 

* In copying Dr. Prime's address as here given, the Vermont Chronicle said: 
" Dr. William R. Williams, who died last month in New York City, was 
as great a Christian and as great a minister as this generation has beheld. 
His life at many points contains a sermon which is more eloquent than any 
word. At his funeral, distinguished men essayed to voice these great ap- 
peals. Nothing that has come under our eyes equals the words with which 
Dr. Prime souglit to gather up the really splendid lessons of this man's life. 
We cannot do better service to our ministerial brethren than to present them 
here." 



REV. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D.D. WJ 

adorn the place that gave him birth and out of which he has 
never lived. Learning comes with measured steps and slow, 
to muse in sadness at the bier of one who had garnered her 
vast stores in his capacious mind and had them always at his 
command. Scholarship, the handmaid of learning, approaches 
and with gracefulness and beauty lays a chaplet on the mar- 
ble brow of the dead scholar. All graces that adorn 
humanity, illumined and glorified by the spirit of our divine 
religion, come to his funeral. Genius, taste, eloquence, art, 
poetry, philosophy, history, ' modesty, meekness, humility, 
whatever the human intellect, exalted by the grace of God, 
can be and do, each and all take on the form of mourners, 
and stand with bowed and reverent heads around the coffin 
of the man who taught them what to be by what he was. 

In the year 1832, in this city, a Christian church assembled 
in a public hall. They had as yet no house of worship of 
their own, being a colony or company from the church of 
which the distinguished Dr. Cone was pastor. And now 
they had met to call some one to be their minister, teacher and 
leader. One of the eldest of the congregation, after various 
names had been discussed, arose and said : " Why should we 
go abroad for a pastor when there is one of our own number 
who has all the gifts that qualify a man for such a service.-'" 
A young man named William R. Williams here rose and said : 
" If we have such a man among us, let us lay hands upon 
him." The people knew to whom the speaker referred, and 
with one voice they called him to forsake the law and preach 
to them the gospel. He saw the heavenly vision, obeyed the 
divine summons, became the pastor of that flock, and fed 
them with the finest of wheat, and gave them the richest 
wine to drink, for the space of fifty-two years, till the Master 
called him four days ago to join " the song of them that 
triumph and the shout of them that feast." 

Born in this city, October 14, 1804, son of the Rev. John 
Williams, pastor of the Oliver Street Baptist Church, he was 
taught in childhood in an academy on Chatham Square, hard 
by his father's house of worship. The venerable Dr. Hague, 
who survives his school-fellow, relates that the little shy lad 



Il8 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

surpassed all his companions in the studies of the school, as 
he did in Columbia College, from which he was graduated 
with the highest honors in 1823. Choosing the law as his pro- 
fession, he studied with the Hon. Peter A. Jay, and practised 
with him five years. After his conversion he joined the 
church of which his father was pastor, who was followed in 
the ministry by the Rev. Dr. Cone. Mr. Williams was active 
in Christian work, displaying those rare endowments that 
attracted the attention of his brethren, and led to his being 
called to lead them into green pastures by the side of still 
waters. His congregation built a house for God in Amity 
Street, near Broadway, where the gospel was proclaimed for 
more than one generation, with simplicity, fidelity, richness 
and power that no«pulpit in the city has ever surpassed. 
There sinners were converted and souls trained for heaven ; 
there the missionary spirit was fostered and prevailed; there 
the Redeemer's praise was sung by multitudes now singing 
with the spirits of the just made perfect. And when the 
voice of this great preacher failed him and his audience 
seemed to be small because he could not be heard by many, 
it was said that the angels were wont to come down and 
listen. I cannot say how true that is ; but this I know, they 
would have heard only what was worth their hearing, and 
they would have been glad to take his sermons and go into 
all the earth with them to preach the everlasting gospel to 
every creature. 

Some of those sermons have been printed and widely read. 
His addresses on special occasions at seats of learning and 
elsewhere growing into volumes have wrought themselves 
into the mind of the church and have become potent moral 
forces in the lives of those who know not whence their im- 
pulses came. The Rev. William M. Taylor, D.D., now pres- 
ent; says that when Dr. Williams's essay on " The Conserva- 
tive Principle in Literature" was published in Glasgow, he 
read it, and it gave a fresh color and influence to his whole 
life-work which he feels to this day. He regards that as one 
of the great religious discourses in the language. 

That is doubtless the greatest of Dr. Williams's productions. 



I?EV. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D.D. II9 

Though written forty years ago, it is fresh to-day and will be 
for all time. It makes the Cross of Christ the grand con- 
serving force in the world's literature. He draws illustrations 
from history, sacred and profane, he rifles the realms of 
science and art, searches the profoundest depths of philoso- 
phy, adorns it with the charms of poetry and song, infuses 
the blood of Christ into the whole stupendous argument till 
it glows and burns with the heat of the gospel, while the 
trumpet and thunder of eternal law shake earth and heaven 
as the dread artillery of God is seen marching on to the 
destruction of error and the establishment of everlasting 
truth. 

He was a mighty reader of books in youth, manhood and 
old age. He read them in many languages. He bought 
them most abundantly, and gathered a library larger, richer, 
and more varied and valuable than any other minister among 
us is known to possess. He knew more about books in all 
departments of knowledge than almost any other man. He 
was a bibliophilist indeed. He lived among his books. He 
died among them, as we shall see. 

Those who never heard Dr. Williams and never read his 
magnificent productions will suspect me of exaggeration in 
speaking thus of his knowledge, breadth, and power. But 
why should I fear to speak in the most exalted strains of 
Christian eulogy of this illustrious man when I heard the 
late Dr. William Adams (easily the most accomplished divine 
in the denomination which he dignified and adorned) say: 
" I am thankful that we have such a man among us, an honor 
to the ministry, and who in sound learning and varied ac- 
complishments is unsurpassed in this wide land." 

And the successor of Dr. Adams in the presidency of 
Union Theological Seminary, the Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, said 
of Dr. Williams : " It is seldom we meet with a man so diffi- 
cult to praise adequately, one in whom we find combined 
masterly intellect, sound scholarship and genuine breadth. 
He is the man I have revered and do revere beyond all others 
in our city." 

And Dr. John Hall, one of my hearers now, confesses : " I 



I20 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

have no language at command to express my admiration and 
respect for one whose clearness of thought, justness of dis- 
crimination, deep learning, catholic views and affluence of 
imagination are recognized so widely." 

With all his intellectual force and vast accumulations of 
knowledge. Dr. Williams was as simple-hearted as a child and 
tender as a woman. He seemed more like an inspired child 
than a great man, so modest, so humble, so gentle were all 
his words and ways. Therefore he was a beloved pastor as 
well as a grand preacher. A son of consolation in the cham- 
ber of grief, he ministered tenderly to the sick and afflicted 
in the loving spirit of his Master. Rare is such a combination 
of graces in one of the saints of God. Absorbed in books, the 
great scholar seldom has sympathies with the world about him. 
He comes to live among the past and to lose his interest in 
the present. Not always is a great preacher a good shep- 
herd. But it was the glory of this good man that his heart 
was never chilled by the blood going to the head : he knew 
much and loved more. He became very wise and very 
learned, but he kept near the Cross of Christ, the central 
theme of his studies and the radiant point in every sermon. 
Had not his voice failed him he would have been mighty in 
the pulpit and on the platform, a leader in the religious 
world, and of world-wide fame. 

For many years past he has been dwelling among us, but 
dwelling apart, yet in living sympathy with the church, with 
her institutions of learning and religion, and with the great 
movements of the age. Many of the younger race of minis- 
ters scarcely knew that this Master in Israel was still here. 
But his near friends knew it and cherished him tenderly. A 
loving home circle held him back from heaven. He preached 
his last sermon March 22. A fatal illness laid its hand upon 
him. The patriarch of fourscore knew the Master's call. 
And as the end drew nigh he said : " Take me out of this 
bed and carry me into the library among the books that I 
love." In tender arms they bore him, as he wished. The 
faithful, loving wife of his youth, two noble sons and a few 
dear friends were around him. More than all, the Author of 



DAVID M. STONE. 121 

his faith, Jesus the Saviour whom he had preached and 
loved with undying love, was with him. He cast a languid, 
dying eye upon the friends and books he loved, and then 
upon his Saviour's breast "he leaned his head, and breathed 
his life out sweetly there. " 



DAVID M. STONE. 

REMARKABLE FIDELITY AND SUCCESS. 

Interviewing is no part of my duty or pleasure. As it is 
pursued in many instances it is a gross impertinence, but 
that is no reason why it is not entertaining. Therefore it 
will be popular until civilization reforms or kills it. But 
without anything in the way of interviewing I have found a 
very remarkable example of steady industry, patience, per- 
severance and success in the case of David M. Stone, Esq., 
editor of the Joiiriial of Commerce in this city. His career 
is full of interest to Christian men of business and to relig- 
ious readers. 

The Journal of Commerce was founded by religious men 
with a high moral purpose in view, and it has never ceased 
to be controlled by men who fear God and keep his com- 
mandments, particularly that commandment which enjoins 
rest from labor on the Lord's day. Nearly all the prominent 
morning newspapers in this city are published on Sunday. 
And as it is often said that the work on a Monday-morning 
paper is largely done on Sunday, it should be understood that 
this great newspaper, the leading commercial paper in the 
United States, is published early on Monday morning without 
a moment's work being done upon it on Sunday. The office 
is closed late on Saturday, and is not opened until after the 
Sabbath is ended. 

David M. Stone left home to look out for himself before 
he was quite fourteen years old, and from that time to this 



122 IREN^US LETTERS. 

has made his own way without pecuniary assistance from any 
one. After his day's work was done he studied Latin and 
Greek by the light of a tallow dip, and thus laid the founda- 
tion for a thorough course of self-education. Early smitten 
with a love of letters, he obtained a local reputation as a 
writer of prose and poetry, and was earning money as a 
writer before he was out of his teens. In the year 1849, and 
not long after the death of David Hale, Esq., of Hale & 
Hallock, proprietors of the Journal of Commerce, Mr. Stone 
was em'ployed on that paper, and has been there without in- 
terruption ever since. He had already made himself famil- 
iar with financial matters, and now took charge of the mar- 
ket, stock and dry-goods reports, and the general editorial 
care of the paper. 

Thirty-six years have passed away, during which time he 
has not taken one week's vacation. He has not been absent 
twenty-four consecutive hours, except Sundays, in the last 
twenty years. This is the most remarkable instance of as- 
siduity, perseverance and health that I have ever recorded. 
In the midst of his labors on the yournal of Commerce, Mr. 
Stone for several years contributed a financial article weekly 
to the New York Observer, edited as a pastime the Ladies' 
Wreath, and conducted the financial department of Hunt's 
Merchants' Magazine. 

Mr. Stone resides in Brooklyn, and is a member of the 
Congregational church of which Dr. Behrends is now, and 
Dr. Scudder was, the pastor. His devotion to religious 
work is in harmony with his diligence in business, and his 
example is as commendable in the church as in the world. 
Dr. Scudder preached more than one thousand sermons 
during the eleven years of his pastorate in Brooklyn, of 
which Mr. Stone heard all but three, and then he was hold- 
ing a service of his own elsewhere. For this indefatigable 
man is a diligent student of the Bible, and gives lectures on 
it, expounding Book after Book of the Holy Scriptures, 
going through the life of Christ, the Book of Revelation, 
etc., to the great edification of the people. Dr. Behrends 
has been settled in Brooklyn for just two years, and Mr. 



DAVID M. STONE. 1 23 

Stone has heard every sermon that he has preached, and is 
always on hand at the weekly prayer-meeting and ready to 
assist if desired. 

Thus we see — and that is the point of this Letter — that 
diligence in business has not prevented him from the en- 
joyment of the highest Christian activity and usefulness, 
while unusual attention to religious duties and privileges 
has not interfered with the most unexampled fidelity to 
the business department of life. It is not often that we see 
these two activities united. It is the sad fact that the cares 
of business too often choke the religious life out of the soul. 
As riches increase even Christians set their hearts upon 
them. I have never yet met a man who was so much ab- 
sorbed with religion as to neglect his business, but I have 
seen several, say ten or fifteen thousand, so absorbed in busi- 
ness that they had little time or heart for Christian work and 
pleasure. Mr. Stone attends to both in their season, carry- 
ing his religion into his business, and doing his religious 
work with the same earnest devotion that he gives to his 
newspaper. 

He is a man of great intellectual ability, and of varied, 
profound and useful knowledge. His department of Ques- 
tions and Answers requires immense labor and research, but 
he gives so much attention to it that it has become an ac- 
knowledged authority. Many lawsuits have been avoided, 
disputes settled, and a vast amount of information gratui- 
tously given by those answers. At the De Lesseps dinner in 
New York Mr. Stone made a speech which for breadth of 
view, extent of knowledge and practical forecast would do 
honor to any statesman. 

He enjoys his well-earned wealth in a rational way. His 
spacious house on Franklin Avenue has handsome grounds 
about it, in the midst of which he may be often seen sitting, 
surrounded by young pcQple to whom he is expounding a 
beautiful plant or flower. His conservatories yield the finest 
fruit. His library and galleries are stored with choice treas- 
ures. He is fond of good horses, and they are better than 
medicines to keep him in robust health and excellent spirits, 



124 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

without which he could not, as he does, work ten or twelve 
hours out of every twenty-four and never take a vacation. 
He is comparatively a young man yet; only sixty-seven years 
vears of age, which I do not consider old by any manner of 
means. But if the years of a man's life are to be meas- 
ured by the amount of good work he has done for God and 
his fellow-creatures, in that case my friend has already 
completed quite a century. He has shown us that " it is 
not all of life to live." We are put here to do something. 
And I count that man happy who can show such a record 
as his. 



ENGLEWOOD : ITS PASTOR AND ITS PATRIARCH. 

Behind the Palisades and on the slope reaching to the 
summit of those munitions of rocks that excite the wonder 
and admiration of the voyager on the Hudson River, lies the 
village of Englewood, in New Jersey. Within a few minutes 
by rail of the great city, it is yet so secluded that it might 
well be considered out of the world, though in it. Here 
several presidents of banks in New York have taken up their 
abode for summer and winter. One of them, an old-time 
friend of mine, comes into town every morning, bringing on 
his back the burden of eighty years. It agrees with them. 
The residences of these and others of wealth, position and 
usefulness are in the midst of ample lawns and groves, and 
being built with the handsomest architectural taste, the whole 
region presents the beauties of nature, with the added attrac- 
tions of artistic culture. 

The church of which the Rev. Henry M. Booth, D.D., is 
the successful pastor is an edifice of rare elegance. It was 
built in 1870 at a cost of $50,000. Dr. Booth came to this 
charge in 1867, when he was twenty-four years old. He is a 
native of New York City, a graduate of Williams College and 
of N. Y. Union Theological Seminary. He has often been 
called away from this delightful spot, but eighteen years of 



ENGLEWOOD : ITS PASTOR AND PATRIARCH. 1 25 

labor have not wearied him, and he does well to stay where 
he is greatly useful and is appreciated by an intelligent people. 
Another of my friends. Col. Washington R.Vermilye, a banker, 
and one of the well-known Vermilye family, resided here, and 
after his death and that of his wife, their daughter, Mrs. 
Emily V. Brinkerhoflf, caused to be erected a chapel in 
memory of her beloved parents. It fills my eye as a thing of 
beauty more completely than anything of the kind I have 
seen in many a year. It is more than a gem of architecture. 
In the stillness and sweetness of early summer it seems to be 
speaking softly of the virtues of the departed and pointing 
to the skies where they have gone. The Rev. A. G. Vermilye, 
D.D., formerly pastor at Newburyport and Schenectady, is 
now a resident of Englewood, and I had the pleasure of 
meeting him and Dr. Booth at the house of a friend, whose 
invitation drew me out here on this charming day. 

You know him — much of him ; and I will tell you a little 
more about him, for he deserves to be had in memory. When 
you were quite young you read about him in the newspapers, 
and you have seen his name, a thousand times, as one of the 
great champions of temperance, liberty and justice. Probably 
you never knew that B in the name of George B. Cheever 
stands for Barrell, but it does, and it is he whom I came to 
visit and of whom I am now writing. He was born in Hallo- 
well, Maine, in the year 1807, the same year in which Drs. 
William Adams and Edwin F. Hatfield were born. He 
graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825, and at Andover Theo- 
logical Seminary in 1830. He was a pastor at Salem, Mass., 
in 1832, and very soon made his mark as a writer for the 
quarterly reviews and other periodicals. In 1835 he had 
distinction thrust upon him suddenly and very forcibly. Be- 
ing an ardent advocate of the temperance cause, in the warm 
zeal of a youth of twenty-five years he wrote and published 
a tract under the title of " Deacon Giles's Distillery." It was 
a terrible exposure of the gross inconsistency of a Christian 
engaged in the manufacture of ardent spirits. The devil was 
pictured as squatting behind the still where the deacon was 
at work, while from the devil's mouth came the words, " You 



126 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

are the deacon for me. " This publication stirred Salem to 
its lowest stone. The author was assailed in the public streets. 
He was indicted for a libel, as the graphic picture was ap- 
plied to a veritable live deacon who was engaged in the bad 
business so severely satirized by the young preacher. He was 
tried, convicted and imprisoned in the common jail for thirty 
days. But the sentence was no dishonor to him, however 
much it disgraced the court and the city. Bunyan in prison, 
Paul and Silas in prison, suffered no sense of shame ; for it is 
not the prison, but the crime, that covers with disgrace, and 
there was no fault to be found with any of these men. And 
the wickedness of the sentence blazed to the heavens. A 
storm of righteous indignation covered the court with obloquy, 
while it made the name of George B. Cheever famous the land 
over. Not long after this forced retirement from public life 
he resigned his pastoral charge and travelled in Europe, a 
correspondent of the New York Observer. His papers on 
Spanish Proverbs attracted marked attention. His genius 
was acknowledged. He wrote several works on his return 
which had a wide popularity. His poetry is of a high order. 
His selections of prose and poetry were in frequent use. 
" Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress," " Powers of the World to 
Come," etc., had large reading, and his name stands high in 
the ranks of American authors. He became pastor of the Allen 
Street church, in New York, and then of the Church of the 
Puritans, whose marble edifice stood by Union Square, where 
Tiffany's store is now. In this church he became the Boa- 
nerges of the antislavery crusade. In the spirit of an Old 
Testament prophet he poured forth the torrents of his denun- 
ciations, while crowds filled the aisles and seats of the church. 
Many listened as though he were a prophet sent here from 
God to utter his judgment upon a sinful people. And when 
there was a weakening of the public sense of justice, and many 
were demanding the abolition of capital punishment, he woke 
the thunders of the divine law, and by his pen and voice 
maintained the justice and duty of punishing the murderer 
with death. 

Fifteen years ago Dr. Cheever retired from the conflicts of 



SOME OF MY METHODIST FRIENDS. 12/ 

public life, and with his beloved wife sought a peaceful even- 
ing in the shades of Englewood. They chose a wooded and 
well-watered terrace on the slope of the Palisades, overlook- 
ing a wide expanse of rural and beautiful scenery ; forest, rich 
farms, groves and streams are before them, and the whole 
western horizon glows in the soft and many-hued glories of 
the setting sun. This was the gorgeous panorama spread 
before us and the patriarch, our host, a poet as well as a 
philosopher, with a flow of strong and picturesque words which 
Coleridge might have been proud to command. He rises to 
a high pitch of indignant eloquence when the new ologies in 
criticism or creed are the theme of conversation. And as an 
old warrior who has put off the harness, he dons his visor, 
sets his lance, tilts valiantly as if the church and the country 
should still feel the might of his red right hand. It was 
good to see him and to hear him. And when I came down 
from the mount, it was as if I had been witb Moses or Elijah. 
Peace be with my dear friends Dr. and Mrs. Cheever. They 
are in the light of God, and from their sweet rural home they 
can see the land that is afar off. The sun goes down before 
their eyes daily, but they know that he shines with new 
lustre on other lands. And so their evening-time is light, 
and before them is light everlasting. 



SOME OF MY METHODIST FRIENDS.* 

About four miles east of the Old White Meeting-house in 
Cambridge, Washington County, N. Y., is the hamlet of Ash- 
grove. In my boyhood I heard it said that a Methodist 
minister was buried there who was the first preacher of that 
denomination in the United States. And he was the first 
Methodist minister I ever heard of. To my young mind 
there was something very impressive in the fact that the 
grave of this lone pioneer of the great Methodist Church 

* From the New York Christian Advocate. 



128 IREN^US LETTERS. 

should be made in Ashgrove, one of the most obscure neigh- 
borhoods in a region then very sparsely inhabited. 

Philip Embury came from Ireland to the city of New York 
in the year 1760, followed his trade as a carpenter six years, 
until Barbara Heck laid hands on him and made him a 
preacher. In 1769 he went north preaching the Word, and 
came to Salem, twelve miles beyond Cambridge. In this 
region he wrought for souls six years. When he was on one 
of his preaching tours he tarried awhile at Ashgrove, and 
was there accidentally wounded by a scythe. He died and 
was buried there one year before the American Declaration 
of Independence was made. In that grave his dust reposed 
till the cemetery at Cambridge was opened, whither his re- 
mains were removed and a monument erected to his 
memory. 

Since coming to the city of New York in 1840, and pursu- 
ing here what has proved to be my life-work, I have had the 
great happiness to know many excellent and distinguished 
men, both laymen and preachers, of the Methodist family. 
Some of them have been among the most valued and beloved 
of my friends. To write of them, and thus revive the charm 
of their friendship and the pleasure of their society, will re- 
fresh the spirit and people my library and fireside with familiar 
forms. I shall hear their voices again and return their genial 
words and smiles, albeit they are now in the banquet-house on 
high, under the banner of celestial love. 

REV. DAVID TERRY, SECRETARY. 

One of the humblest and holiest of my personal friends 
among the Methodists was a man quite unknown to fame, 
but, like Apelles, approved of Christ and greatly loved in 
the communion of saints to which he belonged. He was an 
office secretary in the mission rooms of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, having been a local and travelling preacher 
until the failure of his health and voice compelled him to 
pursue a path of usefulness that did not require him to 
speak in public. He became personally interested in the 
missionaries, who looked to him as their best friend, and be- 



SOME OF MY METHODIST FRIENDS. I2g 

fore they left this port to go to the ends of the world they 
loved to make a visit at his house ; and if any of them re- 
turned, his hospitable door was the first they wished to enter 
on arriving. He was in the habit of writing to me and 
making warm expressions of personal attachment before I 
had met him face to face. When I came to know him the 
attachment was mutual, and continued to increase so long as 
he lived. I met him at St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal 
Church at the close of an evening service, and he said to me. 
" I want you to preach my funeral sermon." When I told 
him that I hoped there was no need of thinking about that 
at present, he informed me of the delicate state of his health 
and the probability that his life would not be long. He 
never spoke to me on the subject again ; and as I was not in- 
vited to perform the service after his death, it was evident 
that he did not intimate his wishes to any one else. 

When I learned that he was very ill — this was not his last 
sickness — I went to his bedside. He took my hand, kissed 
it tenderly, and said : " I was almost over the river ; I 
thought I was crossing it ; but it was not His will." By and 
by his mortal sickness came and he was full of peace. The 
heavens opened to his eye of sublime and simple faith, and 
angels seemed to be about us as I knelt in prayer by the big 
easy-chair in which he was slowly dying. A purer, humbler, 
better man than David Terry it has not been my lot to meet, 
and I do not expect to see another just like him among the 
saints on earth. 

HARPER BROTHERS, 

The four brothers — John, James, Wesley and Fletcher 
Harper — were my warm personal friends during a long term 
of years. That friendship began in business matters. On 
my return in 1854 from Europe and the East they applied to 
me for a book of travels, and while they were bringing it out 
I had occasion to be often with them. The acquaintance 
ripened into intimacy with some of them that continued 
through their lives. They were in many respects a remark- 
able quartet, the like of which has probably never been 

9 



I30 IREN^US LETTERS. 

known in this city. Their hves would reflect credit upon 
any body of Christians to which they belonged. Intelli- 
gently attached to the Methodist Episcopal Church, they 
were fond of its ministers and its ordinances. They had 
their several and distinct departments, and the harmony 
with which they wrought and the efficiency of their united 
but divided labor was wonderful. If E pliiribus tmtcm had 
been the motto on their coat of arms it would have ex- 
pressed the nature and result of their partnership. The 
four were one. James Harper was the only one of them 
given t© humor. He was joking or making pleasantry the 
most of the time. And indeed when I first knew the 
brothers he was not confined to any specific bureau, but, cir- 
culating generally, he imparted life and sunlight to the whole 
establishment. John Harper managed the finances with 
masterly skill. It was marvellous to see him with head 
buried in account-books, plodding silently through them un- 
til two o'clock in the afternoon, and then quietly leaving the 
office to drive a fast horse beyond the Park until sunset. 
Wesley was a devout man, with a temper like that of John 
in the gospel, so sweet and gentle. To know him was to 
love him. Fletcher was the youngest of the four. He dealt 
with authors and decided on books to be published. For 
twenty years he was my confidential adviser, and I some- 
times thought I was his. I mention these traits and our re- 
lations for the purpose of saying that in all the years of my 
intercourse with these men there was never an incident or 
word or omission that was not in perfect keeping with the 
highest type of Christian integrity. They had the reputation 
of being shrewd at bargains. I do not know whether they 
were or not ; but they were always on the square, keeping to 
every engagement, paying one hundred cents on a dollar 
and doing wrong to no man. 

These four brothers were men of business, and they were 
all praying men. They were not impulsive people. I do not 
believe that they were given to shouting. Probably there 
are many in the Methodist Church who had more zeal and 
far less knowledge than the Harper Brothers. But the 



SOME OF MY METHODIST FRIENDS. 131 

church never had four brothers, no, nor four laymen, 
whether brothers or not, of whom she might more justly 
be proud. I knew them many long years while they were in 
active life, and I was present at the funerals, I believe, of all 
of them ; but I never heard of the slightest thing to cast 
suspicion upon the integrity and fidelity to every trust of 
any one of the four. That is high praise of a large manu- 
facturing house, employing hundreds of men and women 
and expending millions of dollars. 

The youngest of the four, Mr. Fletcher Harper, was ad- 
dicted to the very agreeable habit of giving frequent dinner- 
parties in his own house, where he gathered at his hospita- 
ble table literary men, clergymen and others. It came to 
this, that he made every Monday memorable by one of these 
delightful dinners. He had a few friends whom he distin- 
guished by inviting them every week. They were the stock 
company. If a literary celebrity was in town, he was apt to 
be found on these occasions. There was no great ceremony 
about the dinner ; rarely any ladies but those of the family — 
Mrs. Harper and her two daughters-in-law. The invited 
guests numbered generally from twelve to fifteen. These 
are among the pleasantest social incidents of my life. Among 
the ministers often there were Dr. M'Clintock, an accom- 
plished scholar and gentleman ; the historian of Methodism, 
Dr. Abel Stevens ; Dr. Crooks, now the distinguished pro- 
fessor in Drew Theological Seminary ; Dr. Hagenay, pastor 
of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church ; and Mr. Milburn, 
the blind preacher, one of the most entertaining of them all. 
The Methodist clergy were the most numerous of the guests, 
and I believe I was the only member of the stock company 
who was not also of the Wesleyan family. It was natural 
that the conversation should turn largely upon the moral and 
religious questions of the day, on new books and literary 
events, and the mingling of amusing anecdote was sufficiently 
frequent to make the feast eminently enjoyable. No party 
is ever more social and lively than a party of ministers, and 
of them the Methodist ministers easily bear the palm. It 
was at this table that I became acquainted with 



132 IREN^US LETTERS. 

DR. DURBIN. 

He was one of the burning and shining lights of the Meth- 
odist denomination. Tradition invests his name with a halo 
as one of the most brilliant and eloquent preachers which 
the American church has ever heard. I can readily believe 
it, as I heard him once when he was well on in years, and 
was considered then as in the decay of his powers. We were 
having a series of religious services every Sabbath evening 
in the Academy of Music. Preachers of several denomina- 
tions were invited in turn to preach. There was a strong 
desire on the part of some of the denominations that their 
favorite and most effective speakers should be selected ; and 
Dr. Durbin was invited. The Academy was thronged to ex- 
cess. Every spot in which a person could sit or stand was 
occupied. The entire platform, in front of the chairs, was 
covered with people sitting on the floor. It was obvious 
that the Methodists had come in force to honor and to en- 
joy their great preacher, and he filled them with all the ful- 
ness of the richest and loftiest religious eloquence. His 
theme was the dying love of Christ, and it furnished an op- 
portunity for his most characteristic manner. After stating 
his plan and purpose with a simplicity and gentleness that 
gave no high promise of the good things to come, he ad- 
vanced by degrees to the height of his great argument. 
Then it was a flow of soul, of melting tones and tears, caught 
up by the vast assembly in deepest sympathy, while he 
swayed them, roused, subdued, and thrilled them with won- 
derful effect. We were in a vale of tears. That indefinable 
rhetorical gift called unctz'on was his in uncommon measure. 
Pathos was his forte, and when he had concluded it seemed 
to us all as if we were in the midst of a revival, and it was 
good to be there with Moses, Elias, and the Christ whose 
love and blood were now so precious. 

THE REV. JOHN M'CLINTOCK, D.D., 

took the platform on another Sabbath evening. His reputa- 
tion as a pulpit orator was justly very high, perhaps above that 
of any Methodist preacher of that day. He was a fine scholar. 



SOME OF MY METHODIST FRIENDS. 1 33 

more finished and artificial than Dr. Durbin, more intellectual 
and polished, and he was very popular. An immense audience 
filled the theatre, which held a thousand people more than 
can get into the present Academy, taking the place of the old 
one that was burned. Dr. M'Clintock was a handsome man, 
dressed well, and made a fine appearance in public as well as 
in the social circle, which he charmed by his learning, wis- 
dom and wit. He was a man of the world in the sense of 
being familiar with its ways and the usages of society, and 
had a happy faculty of adapting himself to the people into 
whose company he was thrown. This sermon of his in the 
Academy was the only one I ever heard from him, and its 
majestic tones are ringing in my ear this moment as I recall 
the graceful, impassioned and impetuous manner of the 
speaker. He had perfect self-command, and at no moment 
in his delivery did he lose it and exhibit that abandon which 
is said to be essential to the most effective eloquence. Ed- 
ward Everett certainly had none of it, yet he could thrill an 
audience with periods as chaste as snow. Dr. M'Clintock 
strode through some of his sentences with grandeur of dic- 
tion and gesture, enchaining the attention, while the clear- 
ness of the argument easily carried conviction to the under- 
standing, and the splendor of the rhetorical appeal stirred 
the emotions and captured the heart. I would not draw a 
comparison between Drs. Durbin and M'Clintock, for they 
were too unlike to be compared. But it is truth to say that 
they were both consummate masters of pulpit eloquence, and 
shining lights in the church they served and adorned. 

It is not becoming to speak of living men in the Method- 
ist communion whose friendship I prize, and who are wide- 
ly known in this and otlier lands. Our several ways and 
means of glorifying Christ in winning souls to his kingdom 
are such as God has given us, and in the great field of the 
world there are places for us all to fill. Christ's friends are 
mine always and everywhere ; and the only contention I 
want with any of them is to see who will do the most for 
the Master and live nearest to his heart. The friends whom 
I have named in this sketch have been dear to me on earth, 



134 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

and among the joys of heaven I anticipate the blessedness of 
meeting my brethren, the Harper Brothers, and Terry, Dur- 
bin, and M'Clintock, glorified spirits, at the supper-table of 
Moses and the Lamb. 



EXPLAINING AWAY THE GOSPEL. 

Mrs. Partington being asked where she went to church 
replied, "To any church where the gospel is dispensed with." 

The late Rev. Dr. Cox, of wonderful memory, was remark- 
able as an expounder of the Scriptures. In his Ovvego con- 
gregation — and speaking of Owego reminds me of the speech 
he made in the Synod of New York when he took leave of it 
to go to his new charge ; he said, " Owego must not be con- 
founded with Oswego or Otsego or any other of the many 
names having O initial and terminal." 

His facility for using large words was remarkable. It was 
attributed to a slight impediment in his speech, which led 
him to take a word that he could utter without difficulty in 
preference to a smaller one on which he was inclined to 
stumble. But that was not the reason : in writing he had the 
same habit, and if possible he made use of longer words than 
he did in public speech. Nor was there any affectation or 
pedantry in his style. He was as natural as he was brilliant. 
And he was the most brilliant clergyman of his generation. 
As flashes of lightning vanish in an instant, so the corusca- 
tions of his splendid genius were transient, beautiful, mag- 
nificent for the moment, but gone as suddenly as they came. 
There is melancholy in the thought that the best and bright- 
est things he ever said are not on record, and with his con- 
temporaries will pass forever from the memory of man. They 
passed from his own memory, most of them, as soon as they 
were spoken. 

An instance of this occurs to me. He was opening the 
General Assembly with prayer when he was Moderator, and 



EXPLAINING AWAY THE GOSPEL. 1 35 

he introduced ascriptions of praise in three Latin phrases, 
familiar quotations. I was reporting the meeting, and jotted 
down those words just as he used them. But when he came 
to see them in print many years after they were uttered, he 
had forgotten that he ever made use of them, and thought 
they were the fruit of the reporter's too lively imagination. 
Yet Dr. Duliield, who was present, wrote down the words from 
the Doctor's lips, and Dr. Hatfield, a year or two before he 
joined Dr. Cox in the General Assembly above, assured me 
that he heard the words, which were as just and true as they 
were extraordinary in a public prayer. 

He was always ready, or, as he would say, sefnper paratus, 
and was never taken at a disadvantage. The best illustration 
of his readiness is his famous address before the Bible Society 
in London, which I will not repeat, it is so familiar. But it 
is hardly probable that a more splendid example of brilliant 
extempore rhetoric can be found in the whole range of Eng- 
lish literature. In the later years of his life, when his powers 
were not at their best and brightest, he went into St. Paul's 
Methodist Church in this city to worship there as a stranger. 
He was recognized by a gentleman, who went to the pulpit 
and informed the preacher that Dr. Cox was in the congre- 
gation. He was invited to preach, and taking a text, which 
he gave in two or three languages, he preached two hours 
with such variety of learning, copiousness of illustration and 
felicity of diction as to entertain, delight, instruct and move 
the assembly. This habit of preaching long sermons grew 
upon him, and he became tedious in his old age. Many 
others do likewise. It is the last infirmity of great preachers. 
Especially is it true of those who, like Dr. Cox, are fond of 
preaching expository sermons. There is no convenient stop- 
ping-place for a man who takes a chapter and attempts a 
little sermon on each clause or word. Dr. Cox rarely ap- 
proved of the translation in the Bible before him. His Greek 
Testament was always at hand, and after a severe, sometimes 
a fierce denunciation of the text in the received version he 
would give his own rendering, and enforce that with the 
ardor of genius and the power of Christian eloquence. As 



136 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

long ago as when he was pastor in Laight Street one of his 
parishioners, a prominent and wealthy merchant, tired of 
hearing his sermons, went over to Brooklyn to spend the 
Sabbath with a friend. They attended church, and lo ! Dr. 
Cox had exchanged pulpits with the pastor, and now the 
parishioner was compelled to hear the preacher from whom 
he was running away. I have been told that the gentleman 
was converted by this discourse which he heard against his 
will, and he lived to be one of the most useful and distin- 
guished among the merchant-princes of New York. But I 
am wandering. 

I began this letter with the intent of telling you another 
Mrs. Partington remark which the Rev. Dr. S. H. Hall men- 
tioned to me this summer when I met him in the Catskill 
Mountains. Dr. Hall was pastor of the church in Owego 
after Dr. Cox — whether his immediate successor or not I am 
unable to say. In his congregation was a venerable lady 
who was never tired of sounding the praises of her former 
pastor, whose explanatory preaching had been her spiritual 
food for many years. " Oh," said she to Dr. Hall, " you should 
have heard him explain away the gospel !" 

This was just what Dr. Cox did not. It was his forte to 
get the gist of the true meaning of the word, the mind of the 
Spirit, to explain the gospel ; and the modern Mrs. Parting- 
ton, like the more ancient dame, had the ill-luck to twist her 
own words so as to make them convey a sense quite the re- 
verse of what she meant. But it is very certain that the re- 
marks of the two ladies have a very decided application to 
the preaching in which some of our modern teachers indulge, 
to the confusion of their hearers. The Bible is a much 
simpler book than many preachers would have the people 
believe. There are some things in it hard to be understood, 
undoubtedly. But these are not the things they attempt to 
explain or explain away. They find the words of the inspired 
penman in the way of their views, and they go at the words, 
tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, and manage to give an 
interpretation to them which will bolster or at least not op- 
pose their favorite theories. The Bible is the simplest book 



IN PRISON WITH THE CHOLERA. 137 

in the world, and there is no work of its size treating so great 
a variety of subjects which is more intelligible to the com- 
mon mind. Errors, heresies and corruptions in doctrine and 
practice do not arise from the misconceptions which the 
" common people" get from reading the Bible, with the Spirit 
of God alone to guide them. The fundamental truths which 
all evangelical Christians love to believe are on the surface 
as well as in the depths of holy scripture. He who runs may 
read. The Bible is a revelation. The author did not employ 
language to conceal his thoughts. The entrance of his words 
gives light. They make wise the simple. And that preacher 
is the best who is the most scriptural, bringing the truth as 
therein revealed directly to the conscience and the heart. 



IN PRISON WITH THE CHOLERA. 

In the year 1832 the Asiatic cholera made its first invasion 
of the American continent. Its march from the East had 
been watched with fearful apprehension, and the hordes of 
the north descending upon Italy had not inspired so much 
terror as the approach of the cholera whose tramp made the 
world tremble. 

I was at that time residing in the village of Sing Sing, on 
the Hudson. The State prison there had nearly a thousand 
convicts, and they were justly thought to be the material in 
which the cholera would spread like fire in stubble if it once 
broke out. And when I saw large bales of wool from Smyrna 
lying on the wharf in hot summer, it seemed quite likely that 
the cholera had come along with them. 

The apprehension amounted to a panic. A public fast 
was proclaimed. The churches were thronged by frightened 
multitudes, many of whom were not wont to pray. The scourge; 
struck Canada. It came along down to the great metrop- 
olis. The morning newspapers announced two cases of 
cholera in Cherry Street. Then began a flight from the city 
as if a hostile army was at its gates. I met a carriage in the 



138 IREN^US LETTERS. 

country with an old gentleman and lady and bags, bandboxes 
and bundles in it ; they stopped to make an inquiry about the 
road, and when asked, "Where do you wish to go?" the man 
exclaimed, "Any place where the newspapers don't come." 

They had seen the terrible report of the morning, and, 
hastily gathering up what they could, were now thirty miles 
away, and still pushing on. 

Dr, A. K. Hoflfman, father of ex-Governor Hoffman, was 
then the physician in charge of the prison, but not residing in 
it, and my oldest brother, now deceased, was a student of med- 
icine in Dr. Hoffman's office. The long-dreaded pestilence 
burst upon the prison with unexpected fury. The panic made 
the prisoners an easy prey. It was so everywhere. Thousands 
perished who would not have suffered at all had they ^^ept 
their minds in peace, trusting in God. The prison chapel 
was converted into a hospital, the seats into cots. Every 
hour of the day and night men would be attacked, taken out 
of their cells and carried to the chapel for what help could 
be had. It was now desirable that some one or more should 
be in the hospital through the night to give immediate care 
to the men as they were brought in. This fearful duty de- 
volved on my brother with two other young men just enter- 
ing upon practice. At that time we were all believers in the 
theory that cholera was specially an infectious disease. The 
thought of his being locked up in a prison hospital with 
scores of cholera patients in all stages of the dreadful dis- 
ease was terrible to his friends, who could not suppose he 
would escape with his life. But there was no discussion of 
the subject. The path was plain, and he did not hesitate. 
Night after night for some weeks he spent in the midst of 
the sick and dying. When he came out in the day for air 
and refreshment, he would come up to the house, and stand- 
ing at a safe distance would tell us over the fence how he 
was getting on. We often thought of Daniel in the lions' 
den, and the three children in the furnace, and our constant 
prayer was made that God would be with them as he was 
with them of old. I know that parental anxiety on his be- 
half was intense even to agony. But there was never a word 



IN PRISON WITH THE CHOLERA. 1 39 

of remonstrance or entreaty to interfere with his calm, heroic 
discharge of the trust committed to his unpractised hands. 
We all wished it were otherwise and could have made it so, 
but we submitted to it as a part of the debt due to our fellow- 
men. 

We count him a hero who faces death on the battle-field 
or in the deadly breach. And he is. The trumpet that 
sounds the call to arms, and the voice of fame that celebrates 
the deeds of the soldier, may make a hero out of a man who 
naturally shrinks from exposing himself to fire and sword. 
But in the half-century of history since that first invasion of 
cholera, I have reviewed all the fields of bloody valor and 
brave endeavor that have fixed the eyes of the world with 
wonder and made the skies ring with shouts of applause. 
And in all these fifty years no deed of heroism, even at Delhi, 
or Balaklava, or Gettysburg, has required more nerve, more 
devotion, more grit and self-sacrifice than the post of danger 
and the field of labor held by those three young men through 
those successive hot, awful, long and ghastly nights in prison 
with the cholera in the summer of 1832. 

In the midst of one of those nights of terror, a young man 
was brought from his cell, smitten suddenly and fiercely with 
the cholera, and laid upon a cot in the chapel. The young 
doctor was over him in a moment, when the frightened pris- 
oner burst into tears and said : 

"Do you know me, doctor?" 

" No, I do not. Have I ever seen you before.-'" 

" Yes, you have ; we were boys together at the Old White 
Meeting-house where your father preached. My name is John 
Peterson." 

"No, John, and here!" 

" Yes, here, in prison. Doctor, can you save me .-* " 

" I will do what I can for you ; but you need to be calm 
and quiet. Don't talk to me now ; we will talk it all over by 
and by." Then the young doctor with the aid of his assist- 
ant prisoners administered the usual remedies, vigorously 
treated him with every known appliance, and in the course 
of the day following assured the patient that he was doing 



I40 IREN^US LETTERS. 

well and would probably get up. While lying there the 
young man told the story of his leaving the old home in the 
country for employment in the city, where he fell into bad 
company, and then into crime which landed him in prison. 
After the cholera had spent itself in the prison, a pardon was 
procured for the young man, and we had him up at our 
house, hoping that the good work the doctor of medicine 
had done might be continued, " as well for the body as for 
the soul." 

The life of a physician and surgeon abounds in scenes of 
interest, painful, sometimes pleasant. Each one of these 
lives would furnish material for a volume. It was emphati- 
cally true in the case of this brother of mine, who closed his 
practice and his life in the year 1864 at the age of fift;^-three. 
His practice and his life, I say, because they ran together 
until the very end. He made his daily rounds until Thurs- 
day, though suffering with a dreadful cold. On Friday he saw 
patients at home, and called in a physician for himself. On 
Saturday this doctor took me aside and asked if I knew the 
condition of the patient. 

" He is dying, I believe," was my answer. " He is," replied 
the doctor, "and I am astonished: this morning I had no 
thought that he was in danger." 

I watched the action of his heart : feebly it went on with 
its work for a few moments and then stopped ; went on 
again and stopped again ; and then went on. We fought the 
inevitable steadily, knowing too well that defeat was sure. 
His aged mother, under more than eighty years' burden, 
wiped the death-damp from his brow, and with tenderness 
unspeakable moaned plaintively: 

" My son, my first-born son I" 

I said to him : " Brother, is your soul in peace.?" And he 
answered : " My hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in him 
only." 

And so he died. He saved others, even convicts in prison 
with cholera, but himself he could not save. Death destroyed 
the body ; Jesus, the conqueror of death, was the Saviour of 
his soul. 



FIVE MARTYRS OF ERROMANGA. I4I 

If you think it not becoming that I should relate this stoiy 
of a brave brother's heroism in pestilence and prison, I would 
plead in excuse that more than half a century has passed 
since he fought this good fight : he has been sleeping in his 
grave more than twenty years, and this story is but a weak 
tribute of fraternal love. 



FIVE MARTYRS OF ERROMANGA. 

Last Saturday evening I had great satisfaction in meeting 
with the Rev. W. H. Robertson, a missionary from Erroman- 
ga, one of the New Hebrides group of islands. This island 
was made conspicuous in religious history more than forty 
years ago by the murder of an illustrious missionary, John 
Williams, and an English gentleman, Mr. Harris, his com- 
panion. 

Just forty years ago I made an abridgment of the Life of 
John Williams, which was published by the American Sun- 
day-school Union, and called " The Martyr Missionary of 
Erromanga, who was murdered and eaten by the savages in 
one of the South Sea Islands." It was therefore with pecu- 
liar interest that I now met a successor of that noble martyr, 
and learned from him the subsequent history of the island 
and its missionary work. 

John Williams was sent out from England as early as the 
year 1816. Robert Moffat was set apart with several others 
at the same time. Such eminent English ministers as John 
Angell James, George Burder and Dr. Waugh participated 
in the services. Moffat went to Africa, Williams to the South 
Sea. One of them afterwards saw Ethiopia stretching forth 
her hands unto God, and the other heard the islands of the 
sea rejoicing in his law. After long years of wonderfully 
successful labor, Mr. Williams was making a missionary 
voyage among the islands and seeking to plant mission- 
stations on some not yet occupied, and where the language 



142 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

of the natives was unknown to him. With four or five 
others, he went ashore on the island of Erromanga, and in 
half an hour was set upon by the savages and cruelly beaten 
to death, with Mr. Harris, a friend who was with him. 
Others escaped to the boat and were saved. This awfu) 
event filled the religious world with horror, and served to 
fasten attention upon the dark places of the earth filled with 
habitations of cruelty. 

Years passed on and the island that had drunk the blood 
of these martyrs remained in the darkness of paganism, with 
only feeble attempts by teachers from other islands to arrest 
the cannibalism that prevailed, and to give to those pagans 
a knowledge of a higher life. At length the Rev. G. Nichols 
Gordon and wife went out from Canada, in 1857, under the 
care of the Canadian Missionary Society. They succeeded 
in winning the favor of the natives so far as to be allowed to 
settle among them and to begin to do something for their 
good. An epidemic broke out after Mr. and Mrs. Gordon 
had been there four years, and the superstitious natives 
attributed the evil to the coming of these missionaries. 
And so they murdered them both. 

Again the island was left desolate. It richly deserved the 
wrath of God ; and had he forever cut it off from the light of 
the gospel, the sentence would have been just. Who would 
now think of venturing into this den of wild beasts to sub- 
due and convert them } Would it not be madness to try 
another experiment .'' And who would be responsible for the 
blood of another martyr, poured out upon the shore of that 
inhospitable isle ? 

But when was God ever without a witness, a martyr ? 

At length in the fulness of time a younger brother of the 
murdered Gordon said to his Canadian brethren, " Here am 
I : send me." And they sent him in 1864. In the zeal of 
young love for Christ, he took his life in his hands and went 
with his widowed mother's blessing over wide and trackless 
seas, and found this isle of blood where four precious lives 
had been sacrificed and no good done ! Was it right to go ? 
Does God call for such sacrifice } He went alone, save that 



FIVE MARTYRS OF ERROMANGA. 1 43 

one like unto the Son of man was with him. He lived 
among the natives. He learned their language, translated 
portions of the Bible into their tongue, and made known the 
gospel. And they rose up and slew him. Mr. Robertson 
tells me they hated the gospel that he taught, and they 
killed him because they hated the truths that he spake unto 
them. Another martyr, the fifth in doleful succession, and 
the island is still not sunk in the sea. Surely the Lord is 
long-sufTering and very gracious or he would not bear with 
these cruel and wicked men. 

Three months after the younger Gordon was slain the Rev. 
Mr. Robertson arrived at the island with his wife, and took 
up the work that had been so often drowned in blood. The 
population of the island is about 2600 in number, and they 
had settled on the shore in two divisions about twenty miles 
apart. One of these divisions, a thousand people, were dis- 
posed to receive instruction and to tolerate teachers. They 
sowed the seed, precious seed, weeping. Perhaps the 
ground was more fertile because it had been made rich by 
the blood of the saints who had given their lives for Christ. 
And after years of fruitless toil the blessing came. The 
windows of heaven opened and the rain descended. These 
cannibals learned the way of life. They cast away their awful 
rites and ceremonies with which they had sought t04)ropi- 
tiate their gods as cruel as themselves. One thousand of 
them have partially turned away from paganism and are 
learning to know there is one living and true God. Thirty 
schools are in successful progress. Christian churches are 
organized. Two hundred and fifty have received the sacra- 
ments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. And the word of 
the Lord has free course and is glorified there, as it is here. 
Some of those islands are as thoroughly Christian as any 
country on, the face of the earth. On some of the islands 
the horrid customs that formerly were practised, making life 
itself a terror and perpetual crime, have been abandoned. In 
their place the arts and industries of civilization, with all the 
blessings of peace and order and domestic and social virtue, 
prevail. These are the triumphs of Christianity. These 



144 IREN^US LETTERS. 

uttermost parts of the earth are now given to Jesus Christ for 
his inheritance. 

Is the gain worth the cost? Yes, a thousand times, yes! 
Nothing truly great and good was ever bought for less than 
blood. The Son of God laid down his life for us. Deliverers 
of nations have had to march through seas of blood to estab- 
lish liberty. All great discoveries have cost human lives. 
And it always will be so. Perhaps no victories of the Cross 
have been achieved with less sacrifice of human life than 
those which have given the Pacific Islands to be set as stars 
in the Redeemer's crown. And no annals of the gospel are 
richer in heroic deeds than the story of the Sandwich Islands, 
the Fiji Islands, the New Hebrides, indeed all Polynesia, 
whose records are now so familiar that they have lost the 
halo of romance with which they were invested forty years 
ago. 

The age of martyrs has not gone by. The Spirit of Christ, 
who counted not his own life dear unto him, is just as living 
and burning to-day as when the Eternal Son exclaimed in 
the councils of eternity : " Lo, I come to do thy will, O God !" 
And if the wilds of Africa, Corea, or the frozen North de- 
mand volunteers, they are just as ready and as many as when 
they went forth two and two, everywhere preaching the 
Word. 

And it is something to have met and to have taken by the 
hand a living man who has been baptized for the dead, one 
who has gone into the field and to the spot where his fiv^ 
forerunners suffered martyrdom in swift succession. Wil- 
liams and Harris, George Gordon and his wife, and Douglas 
Gordon, his brother — five martyrs of Erromanga ! I see them 
now before the throne in bright array ; having washed their 
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, they 
are kings and priests before God. 



THE MISSIONARY LADY. I45 



THE MISSIONARY LADY IN THE ISLANDS OF 
THE SEA. 

The word lady is used in this Letter as the holy saint John 
used it in his Letters. She of whom I am to write was a 
woman of exalted worth and character, and was also adorned 
with those gifts and graces of person and intellect which are 
the peculiar marks of a lady. 

In college my classmate, and for a time my room-mate, 
was Lowell Smith. He went home toward the end of our 
course to spend a vacation, and then and there in the town 
of Heath, Mass., he found a beautiful girl of nineteen teach- 
ing the village school. She was a native of Barre, Mass., but 
the family had removed to Brandon, Vt., where her father was 
a teacher. She had been thoroughly taught by her father in 
all the elements of a solid education, and her fine mind was 
further disciplined by teaching, in which profession the 
teacher often learns more than the scholar. It is not in my 
recollection that my classmate told me that he had fallen in 
love with a pretty teacher while he was at home. But he 
did, and about the same time he saw his way across the 
ocean to some distant mission field, and to that work he had 
given his heart and soul before this young lady crossed his 
path. . e was full of the spirit of the young men who, be- 
hind the haystack, prayed American missions into being, and 
gave themselves personally to the work long before the 
power came into Dr. Porter's study at Andover. Those 
young men, of whom the world was not worthy, carried the 
spirit with them to Andover Hill, and on it kindled a fire 
whose warmth and light went out into all the earth and their 
words unto the ends of the world. If Lowell Smith had been 
a few years earlier in college he would have been one more 
of that holy band who set their faces steadfastly to go into 
all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 

Miss Abigail Willis Tenney was very young when this call 
came to her heart and soul : not yet twenty years old : but 
her mind was already largely cultivated, and her desires 
10 



146 JREN^US LETTERS. 

strong for influence and usefulness. She was quite in ad- 
vance of her years. It was n-^t a long struggle that she had 
to make. Rather the proposal rose before the soul as a vision 
of heaven revealing to her the crown of a noble life, the 
prize of her high calling, and she accepted it not with the mar- 
tyr spirit, but as the brightest gift that would be among her 
jewels when she became my room-mate's bride. He finished 
his college course in 1829, and went to Auburn Theological 
Seminary to pursue his studies. She went to Ipswich, Mass., 
where Miss Lyon and Miss Grant had recently founded a fe- 
male seminary. Afterward they founded the Mount Holyoke 
Institution. Miss Tenney was already competent to be a 
teacher ; she was soon called on to assist in the school, and 
then displayed the abilities and accomplishments which by 
and by made her such a power for good in the far-off islands 
of the sea. 

Thus three years after they had met and loved passed away, 
and when they had given those years to faithful study, pre- 
paring themselves for the work of their lives, they were mar- 
ried in October and sailed on a whale-ship from New Lon- 
don, November 23, 1832. It is not likely that a sorrier wed- 
ding-journey ever was than these young people had in the 
one hundred -and fifty-nine days during which they were 
buffeted about the ocean around Cape Horn. They finally 
made the Sandwich Islands their destination. The mission 
there was in its youth, but the way had been prepared for 
the advent of Christian missionaries by a series of provi- 
dential events unequalled in wonder and power since the 
Acts of the Apostles were written for our instruction, on 
whom these ends of the world have come. 

Mrs. Smith suffered long and much with feeble health, and 
at the beginning very inadequate provision could be made 
for her comfort. She endured hardship in a native straw 
hut, a model of which was sent to me. For a long time it 
was one of the curiosities of Barnum's Museum. Then Mr. 
Smith built a small house of stones, mostly with his own 
hands, and the natives crowned it with a thatched roof. 
When at length, after removing from one station to another, 



THE MISSIONARY LADY. 1 47 

they settled in Honolulu, and the work so grew and multi- 
pKed that they resolved to build a church of vast size to hold 
immense assemblies, Mr. and Mrs. Smith undertook the task 
that seemed, to human sight, impracticable. Faith in God 
could lay the top-stone. Mrs. Smith was an invalid in bed, 
with native women about her whom she was teaching house- 
hold arts. Now she taught them to make hats, mats and bags, 
to sell to whalers, sugar-planters and natives, and thus material 
was bought for the new church. On and on it went. Mr. 
Smith made moulds for the adobe brick : each parishioner 
made as many brick as he could, and in two years it was 
complete: one hundred and twenty-five feet long and sixty 
feet wide, with seats for twenty-five hundred, and three thou- 
sand could get into it. It was often crowded with penitent, 
believing hearers, and great multitudes were added to the 
church of such as shall be saved. 

Some years ago I asked the trustees of his Alma Mater to 
confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and they 
said, " Why, what hath he done .''" I answered, " He has so 
preached the gospel that under it three thousand have 
believed. If any other of your students has been more 
blessed, give to him the honor." They gave my friend the 
degree, though I did not think his divinity needed doctor- 
ing. It was well as it was. 

In the lovely Nunanu valley, out of the summer heat of 
town, they built a neat, attractive house, a sweet retreat' 
where Mrs. Smith's health was greatly improved. To her 
there came parents of good families asking her to help their 
children in acquiring an education. She consented, and 
from little to great it grew until her house became an Ipswich 
or Holyoke on a much smaller scale. All nations frequent- 
ing the islands sought its privileges for their sons and daugh- 
ters. It was a power in the land. Men of position and in- 
fluence, now in office, sat at her feet. She had eighty pupils 
at one time. What her husband was as a pastor, she was as 
a teacher. Then a government school was set up in the 
present royal premises, and Mrs. Smith was invited to take 
the charge of it ; but she declined, and pursued her work, her 



148 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

life-work, faithful to the end. A leader in every society and 
enterprise for the improvement of the people, she lived for 
the dear islanders and literally died for them. 

In the past fifty years we, in my family, have kept up a 
correspondence with missionary men and women, whose let- 
ters have been a blessing and joy to us and ours. Levi Par- 
sons was of the first mission to the Holy Land, and we read 
a chapter in the Bible daily with him, while he was afar off 
in the East. One letter of his did not reach us until he had 
been dead a year. I could write a long list of missionaries 
whose faces are familiar at our fireside, and their names are 
household words. Those large shells are tokens of love from 
Mr. and Mrs. Smith at the Sandwich Islands. That model 
of the mill at which two women are grinding is from Mrs. 
Graves in Ceylon. And so on. 

But of all these noble sons and daughters of the Lord, 
there was never one whose letters were so intellectual, spirit- 
ual, exalted, so full of common-sense, practical religion and 
self-denying consecration to the work she had gone to do. 
Her tastes were so refined that there must have been much 
in her life among the lowly that her nature would have had 
otherwise, but the grace that adorned her soul made the 
work heavenly, and she moved in the midst as an angel 
would cheerfully leave heaven to do God's will in the slums 
of a city and among the lowest of the children of men. Her 
service ennobled the work. It was great and good because 
her hands and spirit made it so. She touched nothing she 
did not adorn. And now she " has drawn the drapery of her 
couch " around her and sleeps peacefully in the far-off coral 
isles. Five of her children lie by her side. A son and a 
daughter survive. 

And her husband, my brother, my college chum ! In thy 
solitude and sorrow, dear old man, I hail thee across the 
mountains and the sea with words of comfort and cheer. 
Thy wife shall live again ! She liveth now, and walks in 
white raiment among the saved. The abundance of the isles 
has been given unto her and to thee, and thou shalt lay 
trophies of immortal souls at the feet of Him who redeemed 



A WORSE THAN WASTED LITE. 1 49 

them for his everlasting praise. It seems a long time since 
you and I parted and went our several ways to do for God 
and our fellow-men : often as the half-century has worn 
away we have given the hailing sign half around the world, 
and now once more I cry to the winds and waves, and ask 
them to bear my heart's tender sighs to your lonely home : a 
home no more. Be not afraid. The morning cometh. The 
bride of thy youth, adorned for her husband, waits at the 
gate. 

Coming, Lord, coming ! 



A WORSE THAN WASTED LIFE. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

It is now just about forty years since I came in contact for 
the first and only time with Edgar Allan Poe, who is a star in 
the firmament of American letters, and is destined undoubt- 
edly to hold a conspicuous place among the writers of this 
country. Then residing in this city, he was one of a com- 
mittee to examine essays of the young ladies in the Rutgers 
Institute. I was on the committee also. We made our re- 
ports at the Commencement, which was held in the church 
on Rutgers Street. Although the platform on which we 
stood was filled with invited guests, the face of no one of 
them, except Poe's, remains an image in my memory. His 
figure, his stature, the expression on his lip, his eyes, hair, 
even his dress, are distinct impressions, while I could not now 
certify to the presence of the elegant President, Dr. Ferris, 
or any other individual. The portrait of Poe in his Life just 
published* is very accurate, and brings him before me as if 
forty days only, and not forty years, had run away since I saw 
him. And what a lesson of warning and reproof this faithful 
record must prove ! Sad as is the story, with its scenes of 

* " Edgar Allan Poe," by George E. Woodberiy. New York : Houghton, 
MifHin & Co. iSS-;. 



150 IREN^US LETTERS. 

wrestlings with poverty, vice and misery, the author has dared 
to be just, and thus has been compelled to leave on record 
the failings and faults of a splendid genius, blighted and 
blasted in the morning. The author of " The Raven and 
other Poems" will never lack admirers, and those who fail— 
I am one of them — to find in them evidence of the highest 
order of genius will yet cheerfully admit his claim to dis- 
tinction. His prose writings are more remarkable than his 
verse, though he claimed to be a poet of the first magnitude. 
The tales that came in such abundance from his pen were 
often of a weird, grotesque, ghastly, horrible type, and it is 
strange that the average mind can find enjoyment in their 
perusal. Poe was a critic, but his standard was false, his 
conception of the nature and value of beauty was wrong, and 
his analysis often far from being clear. And after these de- 
ductions have been made, and his faults fairly weighed, it 
still remains that he was one of the most brilliant, fascinat- 
ing and remarkable writers of his generation. Yet he writes 
of himself, " Nothing cheers or comforts me. My life seems 
wasted." It was worse than wasted. 

Born in Boston, of parents who were wandering players on 
the stage, he was left an orphan when three years old, adopted 
into a family of wealth where he was petted, was sent to 
school in England, then to the University of Virginia, which 
he soon quits and enlists in the army, obtains his discharge 
and gets a cadetship at West Point, is dismissed at the end 
of six months, seeks his fortune by writing for magazines and 
newspapers, and fights with poverty and wretchedness to the 
end of his miserable days, which were indeed few and evil, 
for he died a worn-out old man at the age of forty ! Wherein 
then is his life a lesson and warning? In this mainly, that 
all this waste and failure and ruin came from his want of 
moral character. Had he been good he would have been 
great, very great, perhaps one of the greatest writers of the 
age. But he was bad from the beginning. Mr. Woodberry 
says at the outset of his memoir : " It may as well be confessed 
at once that any unsupported assertion by Poe regarding him- 
self is to be received with great caution." This habit of un- 



A WORSE THAN WASTED LIFE. 151 

veracity is repeatedly illustrated by examples in his life. And 
the love of truth, which God desires in the inward parts, is 
absolutely essential to a firm, sound character. The gentle- 
man who adopted him and sent him to college heard that he 
was not doing well there, went to him and found that he was 
deeply in debt, and twenty-five hundred dollars were gam- 
bling debts. He was already given to drink; and if not then, 
he was soon so ravenous for liquor that he did not mingle 
it with water, but poured the raw and fiery liquid down his 
throat undiluted. Opium was his craze. He married his 
cousin before she was fourteen years old, getting a too easy 
friend to make oath before the magistrate that she was 
twenty-one. His protestations of love for this child-wife are 
as strong as his great command of vigorous speech can pro- 
duce ; he works into it tales and poems, raves about it in 
every form and figure of rhetoric, but he never cared enough 
for her to spend his pittance for bread when she was starving 
for want of it and he wanted whiskey. His affections were 
creatures of his inflamed imagination. His devotion was lip- 
service. It is not known that he ever loved anybody, except 
on paper. His biographer says : 

" Except the wife who idolized him and the (her) mother 
who cared for him, no one touched his heart in the years of 
his manhood, and at no time was love so strong in him as to 
rule his life; as he was self-indulgent, he was self-absorbed, 
and outside of his family no kind act, no noble affection, no 
generous sacrifice is recorded of him." 

May God forbid that such a sentence shall ever be written 
down against you or me ! Let genms perish ere it soars, let 
fame die out in its infancy and poverty be your lot and mine, 
but in great mercy let it not be said of us, " he never loved 
any one !" 

And as a sure result nobody loved him. He had hosts of ' 
admirers, and some would even call themselves his friends. ' 
They lent him money, and would have been glad to see it 
again. They would have stood by him had he been true. 
But they did not love him, and were only too happy to have 
him look out for himself. And this man who found ten 



152 IREN.'EUS LETTERS. 

dollars a week a large sum to earn and a thousand dollars a 
year a princely income, so straitened were his affairs and so. 
constant were the visits of the wolf at his door, was as proud 
as Lucifer, and prouder too. For the devil believed in God and 
trembled in his presence, while poor, proud Poe exclaimed : 
" My whole nature utterly revolts at the idea that there is 
any being in the universe superior to myself." Is there any 
reason to wonder that such a man was the wretched victim of 
opium, alcohol, and the gaming-table.-* 

How could such a man stand up under temptation of any 
kind ? When at one time he was pledging his word to a 
friend that he would not drink again, the friend told him he 
could not keep his word unless he sought and found help 
from his Maker. Alas ! he knew no such person. 

THE LESSON. 

Let every young man who is fired with ambition to excel 
in a literary career remember that several authors of great 
renown are credited with the remark that "literature is very 
well for a cane, but not for a crutch." It is not to be de- 
pended on for one's whole support. It will do for a help- 
live. Have some honest and useful calling by which daily 
bread may be earned, and to your gettings add the charm of 
letters if you can. Genius, learning, taste or talent will as- 
sert itself if you have that peace of mind and calm content 
which come only when one's bread and water are reasonably 
assured. 

A literary man will do his best work when his nerves are 
quiet, in the morning, after sound sleep and without artificial 
stimulus. Every element of success in writing is more lively 
and abundant in those conditions than in any other. There 
are diversities of gifts and various constitutions of mind and 
body. But the right man is at his best when his faculties 
are in their normal state, or as nearly so as he can get them. 
Wine is a mocker, strong drink a plague, and opium ruin to 
all who would do good brain-work. 

I know that bad men have been great men, that very 
mean, selfish, and vicious men have achieved wealth and fame. 



TO AND ABOUT NANTUCKET. 153 

But that fact does not weaken the grand truth that virtue is 
the only basis of good character, and he who would stand up 
high in the world should be rooted and grounded in truth. 
The paths of literature are white with the bones of young 
men who have perished by the way, victims of their own 
follies : men whose names might have been inscribed among 
the world's benefactors, lights and guides but for their self- 
indulgence. And of this there is not a more melancholy 
example than is left in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. 



TO AND ABOUT NANTUCKET. 

NO, I. 

My journey from Plymouth to Nantucket was tedious, 
but not without interest. It was necessary to go back nearly 
to Boston to get upon the track, and the morning ride was 
enlivened by the pleasant society of the Rev. Mr. Sanderson, 
Episcopal minister of Plymouth, who gave me much infor- 
mation of the region we traversed. He went on to Boston, 
while I had to waste two hours at South Braintree. One 
hundred trains stop there every day, but it has no inn, nor 
restaurant, nor refreshment-room. At length the train from 
Boston arrived — an immense train so crowded that I sup- 
posed it to be a great " excursion." It was only the Saturday 
exodus from Boston to the seaside. With gentle speed we 
crept along to Wood's Holl — formerly Hole, now improved 
into Holl. Here we waited for the steamboat from New 
Bedford. Having fasted at South Braintree, I was a-hun- 
gered, and seeking the humble apartment in which chowder 
and doughnuts were dispensed, with coffee and tea, I recruited 
the inner man, and asked the master of the feast : 

" What shall I pay you, sir .''" " Waal, I guess it's wuth 
about ten cents." 

We did not differ on that point, and by this time the boat 
was in. She had a large company on board, and our crowd 
swarmed over it like bees, covering cabin deck, upper deck, 



154 I RE N^ us LETTERS. 

fore and aft — a living freight that made me think of danger 
at sea. We were soon off, and on an even keel struck across 
to Martha's Vineyard. Then the occasion of this flying 
crowd appeared. 

The island has become a favorite resort of Methodists, 
Baptists, and some others, who have here laid out and im- 
proved extensive and beautiful grounds for camp- meetings, 
literary, scientific and philosophical — I mean philanthropic 
assemblies : tents, cottages, boarding-houses, hotels and all 
kinds of houses being provided by companies or individuals, 
so that men, women and children may be lodged, fed, taught 
and blessed according to their several wants as superiors, 
inferiors or equals. Our boat-load was a fair specimen of 
the mighty multitude of visitors to Martha's Vineyard. They 
came together without distinction of age, sex, color or pre- 
vious condition, with the assurance that every one would be 
cared for as his taste or purse required. We first touched 
at the Baptist Landing. A vast procession marched off the 
boat, carrying baskets, bundles, bags and babes. Then we 
steamed a mile farther on to Oak Bluffs, and another host 
disembarked. 

Martha's Vineyard is a very attractive summer refuge, and 
it is not strange that its Cottage City and all the island have 
become exceedingly popular. The conventions, schools, 
conferences and meetings of many kinds held there in the 
season are too numerous to be mentioned. 

The company remaining on the ship were now to make a 
voyage of thirty miles at sea. It was not rough, yet there 
was motion enough to disturb some of the weaker. Two 
hours and a half saw us safely in port, and we landed with 
the comforting intelligence that every bed in Nantucket was 
already full. But we all found quarters. 

The hotels are not built on the bluffs so as to command a 
view of the ocean. They are in the town, on dull and unin- 
viting streets. The air is delightful : alway fresh, pure, brac- 
ing, full of healing for the languid and weary. It is a very 
restful place: no manufactures, no commerce — just the place 
for worn-out brain-workers with upset nerves and that 



TO AND ABOUT NANTUCKET. 155 

larger class of people who find more work can be done in ten 
months with two months' rest at the seaside than in twelve 
without vacation. Bishop Starkey, of New Jersey, whom I 
was happy to meet, comes every year, and 7-ests. Lawyers 
are in large force. Artists are attracted to these coasts. 

The island has a history. Many people have an idea that 
the Pilgrims, whom I celebrated last week, were the original 
invaders of these parts. But long before the Pilgrims came 
to Plymouth, white men visited Nantucket. The Norsemen 
were here in the eleventh century, and eighteen years before 
the Mayflower put into Provincetown Bay Gosnold landed 
on Nantucket. Two years after his visit Champlain came 
ashore with his company. Indians were then numerous; 
they fought one another, and vanished as the white men in- 
creased in numbers. The Quakers early made a settlement. 
In 1672 a whale was captured. Then the isle struck oil. It 
became the headquarters of the whaling business. Four 
hundred ships once sailed from this port to foreign seas in 
chase of whales. All the men were thus employed. The 
houses were built with a platform on the roofs, to which the 
women resorted to look out to sea for the return of the 
ships. The affairs of the town were largely left in the hands 
of the women. The Quaker element predominated. Quiet- 
ism was the spirit of the place. Women took the lead in 
many matters. They do yet. Last year five pulpits were 
occupied on one Sabbath day by women-preachers. The 
orthodox Congregational church, the oldest on the island, is 
now ministered unto every Sabbath day by a woman. 

In the day of its great commercial prosperity Nantucket 
had 12,000 inhabitants. But when, on the advent of petro- 
leum, the whales retired, business declined, and like Tyre 
the city became almost a solitude. Two thirds of the popu- 
lation sought their fortunes elsewhere. Houses stood empty. 
Some were sold for a trifle and carried off to be put up else- 
where. Many of the streets are narrow lanes, and on them 
are ancient houses, some unpainted, only one story high, very 
small, and in them live quiet, respectable and intelligent 
people who love God and their fellow-men. 



156 I RE N^ us LETTERS. 

It was my good fortune to meet a gentleman and his wife 
from New York, with whom I explored the place. She was 
a native of Nantucket, has relatives living here, and had now 
returned, after several years' residence abroad, to see the 
homes and haunts of her childhood. With these friends I 
visited the oldest house on the island, built in 1686. The 
only curious thing about it is a large horseshoe form built 
of brick into one side of the chimney, probably as a super- 
stitious charm. On one of the narrow lanes up which we 
rode into a large courtyard we found the house said to be 
next to the oldest, one story in height, the ceiling very low. 
The lady of the house had been a sufferer for two years past 
from an accident, and only with difficulty, on two crutches, 
could she get about. The house was as neat as wax — kept 
so by her own hands; the queer rooms were decorated with 
spoils of the sea and of foreign shores, from which the whal- 
ers returned with other treasures than oil. I was permitted 
to wander over the house and up into the attic where herbs 
and tools and curious dilapidated articles found asylum. Re- 
turning from this exploring tour, we conversed with the eheer- 
ful invalid, and left with a pleasant invitation to come again. 

My friends invited me to spend the evening with one of 
their friends, a lady whose father was a sea-captain many 
long years ago in the China trade. It was his pride to bring 
home with him, to adorn his house and please his wife, gems 
of Chinese art, which have been carefully preserved in the 
family, and are now of great value. Nantucket has large 
quantities of such treasures. It has been ravaged by collec- 
tors, who are not often successful in obtaining spoil : for 
these Nantucketers, especially the women, are proud of their 
seafaring ancestors, and hoard these evidences of their suc- 
cess as if they had been vikings. As we knocked at the door 
of the large mansion, we heard the music of the piano within. 
It ceased, and the lady herself, the sole occupant of the house, 
her husband being absent on business elsewhere, opened the 
door and bade us welcome. In the course of the evening she 
showed to us the works of art which her father had left her: 
exquisite paintings on glass of scenes in the Trojan war, 



IN AND ABOUT NANTUCKET. 157 

Priam begging from Achilles the dead body of Hector, etc. ; 
a large China vase and a pitcher, both of them of elegant de- 
sign and workmanship, with cups and saucers, and number- 
less specimens of Chinese genius and industry, which, though 
made a hundred and fifty years ago, are more valued now 
than when they were first produced. The lady told me she 
had been offered ten dollars apiece for the tea-cups, but she 
loved them more than money, and preferred to keep her 
China closet for herself and friends. 

There was a charming simplicity and naturalness about 
the people, and this is only the beginning of my social in- 
tercourse with them. You will have to endure another letter 
or two before you will know half that may be told of a place 
of which you have heard all your life, but is only recently 
taking its place among the great watering-places of the 
country. 



IN AND ABOUT NANTUCKET. 

NO. II. 

Judge Folger, the distinguished Secretary of the United 
States Treasury.* is a native of Nantucket. The name is 
very abundant. The mother of Benjamin Franklin was a 
Folger of Nantucket, and the present Secretary is said to 
resemble her son. Deacon Folger has a remarkable clock, 
which he was kind enough to show me, made by his father, 
in 1787 and '88. It is an astronomical clock, showing the 
movements of the sun, moon and earth, with dates of days, 
months, years and centuries, with a great variety of motions, 
that I cannot recollect : an extraordinary piece of mechan- 
ism, the invention of the maker, and quite unique. 

Miss Mitchell, the most eminent female astronomer, is a 
native of this island, and the telescope with which her early 
observations were made is preserved. The Athenaeum has a 
small but interesting collection of curiosities, the most val- 

* This Letter was written in September, 1880. 



158 IREN^US LETTERS. 

uable being the jaw-bone of a whale with all the teeth in 
place. This draws many visitors, who are disposed to insti- 
tute a comparison between the Athenaeum and a private 
museum in another part of the town. This is Mrs. Mc- 
Cleave's, in a modest, modern house, near the Soldiers' 
Monument. She does not advertise it, nor hang out a sign. 
The small fee that she receives is applied to a special char- 
ity in which she is interested, and she does not seek to make 
money for herself by the exhibition. She is a character, 
and more an object of interest to one who hears her than 
anything she has to show. With my friends, who had in- 
troduced me to so many pleasant places, I called at two 
o'clock in the afternoon, and the lady, with some hesitation, 
permitted us to enter the house. Her little parlor was 
adorned with the portraits of her lamented partner, a 
famous sea-captain, and also of several of her posterity. To 
these she called our attention, mentioning casually the dis- 
eases that took them off, and the date of their several de- 
partures. She was deeply afflicted in the death, by measles, 
of a grandson, who was to inherit the entire museum, hav- 
ing given remarkable promise of being worthy to enter upon 
such a possession. After a brief eulogy on each of the 
departed, she led us upstairs to the room in which her treas- 
ures were garnered. Other visitors came in and filled the 
benches. She produced some remarkable specimens of carv- 
ing on whales' teeth, saying, "These were done by a young 
man on my husband's ship ; he was an uncommon man, 
would not associate with sailors, but when off duty spent all 
his time in cutting and carving." We saw great numbers 
of shells, some very peculiar and pretty, eyestones, snakes 
and their skins, in alcohol and dried ; things odd from every 
quarter of the globe, some interesting only because of the 
place from which they came, some were presents sent to her 
by visitors who had seen her things and wished to give her 
more: strange little animals preserved, which she exhibited 
with entertaining anecdotes of their habits and perform- 
ances. "This great shell-comb," she said, "was my twin- 
sister's : it cost seven dollars : she hadn't only four dollars 



IN AND ABOUT NANTUCKET. 159 

but set her heart on having this comb and saved up her 
money to get the other three dollars, and was so long about 
it that when she got it, the comb was out of fashion and she 
had lost all her hair. But she bought it, and here it is." 
Next, the lady treated us to a poem of her own composition, 
describing the remarkable performance of one of her rela- 
tives, who laid aside his frock-coat and sawed off the top of 
a cedar post at the old homestead, which top she now exr 
hibited, together with boxes made out of the wood of ships 
wrecked on Nantucket shoals, and a thousand and one 
knick-knacks of no possible interest to any one but the 
owner. Then she pointed to a picture saying, " That is my 
grandmother sitting in her chair as she was when ninety 
years old : she lived to be ninety-one, and then went away 
with a full head of long black hair." 

We had now listened two hours and a half, and being 
sufficiently instructed for one day, retired with thanks. 

Nantucket has a supply of churches quite in advance of 
the present demand, as they were built for three times as 
many people as now dwell on the island. Two of them 
would easily hold all that attend when summer visitors are 
not here. Two of the meeting-houses are Quaker, as they 
are here called. The Congregationalists built in 171 1, and 
moved their house down town in 1765 to its present site. 
Afterwards they built a large edifice, and the old one directly 
in its rear is still in good order and is constantly in use for a 
lecture and a Sunday-school room. It is now one hundred 
and seventy years old, and the timbers are as sound as ever. 

BEDRIDDEN TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS. 

I was asked to visit a member of this church who had 
long been a helpless invalid. She had a fall and injured her 
spine, and paralysis of her left side ensued. I found her 
lying in bed as she had been, for twenty-eight years ! In all 
that time she had never been able to sit up or be moved. 
Excruciating pain has been her portion, and often she has 
been on the rack for long hours. She was cheerful, patient, 
resigned, anxious to be restored if it were the will of God 



l6o IRENy^US LETTERS. 

submissive if otherwise ; she was lying in his hands as an 
infant on its mother's knees. Able to use one hand only, 
she manages to sew and even to do fancy work, by which 
she earns a little something toward the great expenses of 
such a life as hers. The consolations of religion she knew 
and enjoyed. In this school of bitter experience she had 
learned far more than books can teach. It was good to sit 
at her bedside and lead her on to repeat the lessons of nearly 
thirty years in the furnace of affliction. 

This quiet old town would furnish many chapters of inter- 
est if we should open the doors and make the acquaintance 
of the people. A blind lady teaches a mission-school, and 
her life of darkness and usefulness is full of pathos. Stories 
of the sea are traditions in many families. As the shoals 
of Nantucket extend nearly forty miles from the island, the 
navigation in the vicinity is perilous, and wrecks are numer- 
ous. Frightful stories of such disasters are frequent tradi- 
tions. The old burial-grounds are rich in reminiscences : 
one of them has only a single grave marked in it, and that 
has the ashes of one of the first settlers of the place. The 
headstone has survived the frosts and storms of one hundred 
and eighty years, and still bears the legible record, " Here 
lies the body of John Gardner, who was born in ye year 1624, 
and died a.d. 1706, aged 82." 

SIASCONSETT OR SCONSETT. 

About seven miles from Nantucket town is one of the 
most eccentric villages on the islands or coasts of New Eng- 
land. It has lately figured in romance and history, and 
merits a brief mention. On a bluff, overlooking the open 
sea, seventy or eighty fishermen put up very small but com- 
fortable cottages for their families, and houses also in which 
to cure the codfish that are caught in great quantities here. 
This settlement was an object of curiosity to visitors, and at 
length some of them got into the way of staying among the 
fishermen, enjoying the novelty and the sea. By degrees 
they induced the fishermen and their families to give up 
their houses for a few months in the summer. Finding it 



A KENTUCKY HORSE-SALE. l6l 

more profitable to rent their little homes and go to Nan- 
tucket for work in warm weather, and visitors increasing, 
the owners have nearly all deserted, and families from dis- 
tant parts of the land — the chief cities — have come in, and 
taken possession. Some have built neat cottages of their 
own. Two or three small hotels have risen up to supply 
those with board who do not wish to " keep house." A 
hundred families — four or five hundred people — are now 
quartered here. The cottages are like baby-houses for size, 
but being on the edge of the sea they are cool, and the 
occupants prove that man needs but little here below. I 
found my friend, Mr. William Ballantyne, of Washington 
City, residing here for the summer, and he said it was very 
healthful and enjoyable. It is as still as the desert, except 
for the ceaseless moan of the ocean. The hundred families 
have just now combined and raised money to erect a house 
for public worship. The good people here and in Nan- 
tucket are greatly desirous that the visitors shall respect 
their ancient and time-honored custom of keeping the Sab- 
bath as a day of rest. It is a hardship which the inhabit- 
ants ought not to endure to be invaded hy polite people who 
have not regard for the laws of God or man. 



A KENTUCKY HORSE-SALE 

It was a sudden transition from the church to a horse- 
sale. 

But very near the door of the church in Lexington where 
the South and the North had been shaking hands in the 
warmest of fraternal relationship stood my friend Mr. 
Ephraim Sayre and his carriage in waiting, and without any 
delay we were being driven six miles into the country to at- 
tend a horse-sale. It should not be called a fair, for the 
horses to be sold belong to one man only, who has raised 
them and pursues it as his business. There are many in 
this part of Kentucky who follow it successfully. Each one 
II 



l62 IREN^US LETTERS. 

has his annual sale, and months in advance he publishes a 
catalogue, giving the name, age and pedigree of each horse 
that he offers for sale. Buyers come from all parts of the 
country, especially from New York City, The scene is to us 
novel and interesting. 

A circular range of stables incloses a large area : a roof 
projecting into the circle all around makes a shelter from 
the sun, and seats are filled with ladies and gentlemen. The 
round inclosure of green grass is perhaps two hundred feet 
in diameter. The stables open on the outside of the ring, 
and a small window opening in enables the horses to put 
their heads out and observe the sale as it proceeds, and to 
hear the prices which their companions bring. The auction- 
eer stands on a raised platform, surrounded by reporters and 
correspondents of newspapers from far and near, who are 
taking down the price at which each horse goes, and this is 
rapidly sent off by mail and telegraph to distant cities. Mr. 
Sweigert is the owner of the stock now to be disposed of. 
They are all yearlings. He prefers to sell them at that age 
rather than to run the risk of keeping them till they are 
older, though the price of a colt of promise rises rapidly. 
It is difficult to effect insurance on horses: they are a preca- 
rious property, and I was told that it is hard to ascertain 
with certainty whether the horse that dies is the one in- 
sured or another. But of that I know nothing. The gen- 
tlemen who are interested in this raising and sale of horses 
are as honorable and trustworthy men as any in this com- 
munity, and some of them never engage in racing or any 
speculation with the stock, confining themselves to the 
legitimate business of raising horses for sale. 

We reached the grounds in the midst of the sale. Seats 
were immediately provided for the ladies. We were intro- 
duced to several gentlemen of distinction in Kentucky, who 
were deeply interested in the horses and the prices, and 
while the sale was going on we had time and opportunity 
for making pleasant acquaintances. 

A yearling colt has not developed into "a thing of 
beauty." He is not filled out, but has more good "points" 



A KENTUCKY HORSE-SALE. 1 63 

about him than he will have when he has more flesh with a 
year or two more of age. Yet there was a great variety of 
form, color and action. The printed catalogue told us of 
each one, who was his father and grandfather and so on, and 
as a negro boy led him in and trotted him around the circle 
on the grass, leading him, not riding him, he was under the 
fire of critical eyes, and eyes of good judges of horse-flesh. 
The buyer must form his opinion of what the colt will be 
one, two or three years hence : and he will make up his 
mind from the family to which the colt belongs, and the 
peculiarity of limb and muscle which he sees in the embryo 
trotter and racer before him. To me there was no great 
difference in their build and action, and it is quite likely that 
what to me was a beautiful animal had no attraction for a 
man who cared nothing for "looks" but knew very well what 
was the sign of future speed. And when the sale was going 
on of these little and unhandsome creatures my surprise was 
great when three hundred, five hundred, a thousand, two, 
three, four, and in one case five thousand dollars and over 
were bid for one, and not the best-looking one at that. 
Great applause greeted this sale, and it was felt that all 
former horse-sales were now outdone. And so it proved. 
For when the forty-five colts were sold at prices varying 
from $200 to $5100, it was found that the sales amounted to 
$50,000, or more on an average than $1000 for each yearling! 
Other sales had recently taken place in the vicinity, and 
others were held a few days afterwards, notably at the Alex- 
ander farm and stables, but at no sale this season did the 
prices range so high as at Mr. Sweigert's. 

After the sale was over, instead of a barbecue, such as I 
attended at the Alexander sale, twenty-five years ago, and of 
which you read, and of course remember the account I gave 
at the time, we were invited now to a repast of a savory 
and, I am told, a delicious character. It was not conven- 
ient for us to remain, as other hospitalities awaited us. I 
forget the name of the great dish of this feast. It is com- 
posed of a stew that takes in all nice vegetables and all 
kinds of game — squirrels, rabbits, birds, and doubtless lamb 



164 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

and beef — all boiled together and suitably seasoned, making 
a dainty dish, fit to set before a king. And I have no doubt 
that for those who like that kind of thing this would be the 
very kind of thing they like. But we were called away, and 
retired from the grounds greatly indebted to Mr. and Mrs. 
Sweigert for their kind attentions, and to the other ladies 
and gentlemen who made our visit to the horse-sale so agree- 
able and instructive. 

THE HENRY CLAY MANSION. 

Ashland, the residence of Henry Clay, is sacred ground. 
After his death it was for some time occupied by one of his 
sons. Then it was sold to a religious society, that used it 
for an agricultural and manual-labor college. Recently it 
was bought by Mr. McDowell, whose wife is a granddaugh- 
ter of Henry Clay, and it is now in the family again. The 
proprietor is of the Governor McDowell family of Virginia, 
and therefore, on his side and that of Mrs. McDowell, the 
race is historic. The mansion, rebuilt some thirty years 
ago, precisely as it was in the days of Mr. Clay, is now the 
seat of generous Kentucky hospitality, and visitors on pil- 
grimage or by invitation are daily entertained. 

It was at this elegant mansion that we had the honor, on 
Saturday evening, of assisting at what is here called a " High 
Tea." The "first families" of Lexington and vicinity, in 
full evening dress, were assembled for a social party ; the 
halls and library and salons of the manor-house were thrown 
open, and the guests circulated freely and pleasantly ; tea 
was served, with abundant refreshments besides ; music en- 
livened the scene ; the young people enjoyed themselves 
greatly ; and it is very rare indeed, in any city or in any 
country, that so much beauty, gracefulness, ease of manner, 
with real refinement and courtesy are to be seen. As Ash- 
, land is some four or five miles from town, the company was 
assembled before sunset, and Mr. McDowell was kind enough 
to take me to his stables and show me some of his horses. 
Several of them are magnificent creatures, easily bringing, 



THE HORSE-RACE. 1 65 

when he sells, $10,000 each. Not long ago he sold one at 
that price, which soon after brought $25,000. 

The principal market for these horses, for the raising of 
which this part of Kentucky is very famous, is the city of 
New York. The quality of speed is most in demand. Not 
for racing chiefly, and I wish it were not at all for racing. I 
do not believe it can be shown that horse-racing has ever 
helped to improve the breed of horses, while it is true, be- 
yond all doubt, that it misimproves the breed of men. But 
the increase of wealth and the desire for fine horses for the 
road and the park creates a boundless market for the very 
best animals. And this is true also of other cities, and all 
parts of this wonderfully advancing country. 

Every day at Lexington brought to us invitations to enter- 
tainments far beyond our capacity to accept and enjoy. But 
we left it with grateful hearts and abiding memories of de- 
lightful friends. 



THE HORSE-RACE. 

It is impossible for us who have no taste for such things 
to understand the enthusiasm of horse-lovers in the perform- 
ances of their favorite animals. There is no more harm in a 
man's indulging his fancy in horses than in yachts or pic- 
tures. If he can afford the money, he may as well spend it 
in one of these fancies as another. 

The English people make as much of Derby Day as many 
Christians do of Christmas or Easter. And it is quite credi- 
ble that they were as sorry that an American horse won at 
the last race as their fathers were rejoiced when Wellington 
conquered at Waterloo. Indeed, when a French horse won 
the Derby a few years ago, the Frenchmen said : " Waterloo 
is avenged !" 

I was visiting a great planter in Kentucky, near Lexington, 
while attending the Presbyterian Assembly. He wanted me 
to see a couple of colts six weeks old, and when they were 
brought out I said, " Morgan colts." 



1 66 IREN^US LETTERS. 

"Why," he exclaimed, "do you know a Morgan colt when 
you see it ?" 

" Certainly," said I ; "or an Eclipse colt." 

" Well done !" said he ; "I never saw a minister before that 
knew a Morgan horse, or any other, at sight. Why, sir, you 
can have a call to any church in Kentucky. " 

My fame spread rapidly. A gentleman some twenty miles 
away had recently imported or bought a couple of Arab 
steeds, and sent word to me that he would be pleased to have 
my opinion of their quality, as he understood I was a judge 
of horses and had studied the Arab stock in their native 
country. I was very happy to "view "them. He came up 
with them, — a splendid team, — and he had great satisfaction in 
the judgment passed upon them. He asked me if the General 
Assembly would like to come out of the church and see 
them. I said they would hardly adjourn for that purpose ; 
but if he would be there with them when the morning session 
closed, I would call the attention of the members to the 
horses, which I did, greatly to the pleasure of the gentleman 
and the animals. 

The improvement of the breed of horses is one of the 
most useful of out-of-door pursuits, so largely are we depend- 
ent on this noble animal. But — and there is a serious btU in 
the case — the horse-race is not in the line of improving the 
race of horses for any of the useful purposes of life. On the 
contrary, useful horses are not the result of raising horses for 
speed, and the moral influence on the men who make raising 
and racing their pursuit is bad. This has been said so often 
that it goes now without saying: which nobody can deny. 

That there is a vastly increasing tendency of late toward 
horse-racing there is no doubt. It has now the counte- 
nance and favor of a class of men who looked upon the 
practice with positive condemnation a few years ago. The 
farmers at the county fairs regard the horse-races and trot- 
ting-matches as far more entertaining than a ploughing- 
match or a show of splendid bulls. But all the horse-races' 
in the world never helped a farmer toward better horses for 
draught. 



A SOJOURN- IN BABYLON. 1 67 

And the moral or the immoral of "the turf" is now as 
well understood as its usefulness. It is a species of gambling, 
and therefore in itself evil. It is full of cheating and trickery 
and bribery, and the wonder is that honorable men can give 
it their sanction. The best English races are often deter- 
mined by hiring the rider of a favorite horse to lose the race. 
Sir John Astley (a noted sportsman) publishes a letter he re- 
ceived from the owner of a horse he was betting on, in 
which the scamp of an owner says : " The bookmakers will 
not respond fairly to me. Could you manage to send me 
one thousand not to start, or get me twelve thousand to one 
thousand to win ? Reply to mutual advantage." 

Just such owners and riders and bctta-s are to be found in 
every race, but not always nor often found out. And this is 
the reason why dealing in horses leads to jockeying, which 
is a name for cheating and also for riding a race-horse. It 
is queer that a jockey should come to mean a cheat or a rider 
in races. 

If I had the means I would indulge in the luxury of fine 
horses : not to the extent that Mr. Bonner does, who is an 
example worthy of being commended. He drives the fastest 
trotting-horses in the world, but he never allows them to 
trot or race against other horses. He never bets on races. 
He uses his horses well, and they minister to his health and 
pleasure. That is right and sensible. But horse-racing is 
not useful, and it is injurious to many and generally 
demoralizing. 



A SOJOURN IN BABYLON. 

Not in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, nor the Babylon 
of the Revelation, but in Babylon on Long Island, not forty 
miles from New York, I have been sojourning a few days. 

The train by which I went down from the city proved to 
be what is called an " accommodation ;" as it doubtless is to 
the dwellers along the line. After we had been going some 



1 68 I REN /E us LETTERS. 

time, I asked the conductor if the next station was Babylon. 
He said, with commendable dignity and distinctness: 

" Babylon is twenty-seven miles farther on, and there are 
sixteen stations before we get there." 

I resigned myself to the situation, being happy in that we 
had escaped with our lives from the horrible smells of Hunt- 
er's Point and its vicinity. In the city of New York we are 
daily and nightly treated to the fragrance of various chemi- 
cal and fertilizer factories located in the region of what is 
known as Long Island City, and all the powers of persuasion, 
law and money have proved fruitless in the war of extermi- 
nation. It is not unusual for children and adults to be made 
sick by inhaling the foul odors wafted over the East River 
and pervading the higher parts of the town. Perhaps such 
are some of the inevitable evils of civilization, and inasmuch 
as the products of these foul factories are among the necessi- 
ties of life, and must be made somewhere, it may be the duty 
of large cities to submit to the danger and disgust which 
their presence occasions. 

As soon as we take seats in the trains on the Long Island 
railroad the perfume enters, and the gales of Araby the blest, 
or the spicy breezes of Ceylon, are sweeter far. But like 
many other ills of life, this is soon over. We rush through 
it without loss of life, and enter the purer airs of the island. 
The old town of Jamaica, and the new Garden Cit3^ and a 
score of minor places are passed by the way, and in the space 
of an hour and forty minutes — an hour only on the express 
trains — we are safely brought to Babylon. 

The names of places on Long Island taken from the Bible 
would indicate a pious disposition on the part of those who 
made the selection, as the classic names of towns in central 
New York had their origin in the taste of the military gen- 
tlemen to whom the duty of laying them out and naming 
them was assigned. But there are very few towns on Long 
Island having Scripture names, Jerusalem, Jericho and Baby- 
lon being the most conspicuous. And it is a tradition that a 
neighborhood meeting broke up in great confusion when 
trying to agree upon a name for their settlement, and from 



A SOJOURN IN BABYLON. 1 69 

the babel that occurred the place got the name of Babylon, 
which it bears to this day. It has been settled more than a 
hundred and fifty years. A church edifice was built in 1730, 
and the congregation, now Presbyterian, has maintained the 
preaching of the Word ever since. The father of Dr. Rich- 
ard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, was for a short time the preacher. 
The congregation now has a very neat church, and a chapel 
adjoining, but at present is without a pastor. There are also 
Methodist and Baptist churches in the village, and the Epis- 
copalians worship in a church at West Islip, close by. The 
next town is Islip, where the Episcopalians have a beautiful 
church erected by one of the Vanderbilts of New York. 
The Presbyterian congregation there has for its popular pas- 
tor a young friend of mine, the Rev. Arthur H. Allen, 

All this part of Long Island is the refuge in the summer 
season of thousands of New Yorkers, some of whom have 
elegant country-seats, on which large sums of money have 
been expended ; and there are hotels of every degree of com- 
fort and cost, so that the whole seaside is peopled three or 
four months in the year by citizens seeking cool air, repose 
and amusement. The Great South Bay stretches some sixty 
or seventy miles, being separated from the ocean by a narrow 
ridge of sand, which makes a Mediterranean sea, beautiful 
for sailing purposes and full of fish. Fire Island is about 
seven miles off from Babylon, and a ferry-boat makes con- 
stant communication with it. It is a great resort in summer, 
as it is never hot, notwithstanding its name. Indeed, along 
the coast the climate is uniformly cool and delightful. 
During those dreadfully hot days from the third to the ninth 
of the month of July there was no sign of great heat here 
in Babylon, nor in any of the riparian towns in this region. 
So much for the climate. As for repose, you may have that 
to your heart's content. There is nothing to be done. And 
in the shade of the piazzas and what trees there are you can 
be comfortable all day, and when night comes, well covered 
up, you will sleep soundly and rise to renew the same inter- 
esting round. 

I am sorry to say that Sunday is the great day for fishing, 



I/O IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

for sport in the bay and in Fire Island inlet. Many who are 
confined by their business in the city all the week comedown 
here and spend Sunday on the water. A charade was in- 
vented for the entertainment of the guests at the hotel ; it 
was called " Sunday morning," and was represented by a 
number of gentlemen with fish-poles in hand, and as many 
ladies with prayer-books, each company going to their re- 
spective services. 

The bay is to the inhabitants of these parts what the mines 
of gold or coal are to their owners. It is a remarkable fact 
that this young country of ours is at the head of all the na- 
tions of the world in the fishery industry, and our exhibits 
in this line at the great exposition in London exceed all 
others. And this, too, not only in the amount and value of 
the products, but in the completeness and efficiency of the 
means employed in the business. It is but a small part of 
the whole that is done off the shores of Long Island. But 
the markets of New York are so near and fish are so abun- 
dant that the business offers strong inducements which are 
eagerly embraced by the enterprising islanders. The oyster 
traffic is immense. And when we think of the penetrating 
power of the oyster into the remotest parts of the country, 
every restaurant away in the interior, if not on the frontier, 
requiring a constant supply, the wonder is where the luscious 
mollusks are found in sufficient quantities to meet the im- 
mense demand. Two bays of Long Island take their name 
from the oyster, and preserve their right to it by the annual 
supply they afford. It sounds strangely to a landsman far 
from the sea to hear of sowing oysters, or planting them, 
but both these terms are common and proper. The oyster- 
man collects the seed and sows it, and he brings oysters 
from one locality and plants them in another, where their 
flavor is improved by the nature of the water in which they 
grow. Thus the oyster trade is one great branch of business 
on the shores of Long Island. 

The summer visitors on the coast must have their " races" 
or they could hardly lay claim to being in the world. They 
have them in this vicinity, but where I have not learned. At 



BABYLON AND FIRE ISLAND. 17I 

the " meeting" soon to come off a very novel prize is to be 
run for. A gentleman, having buried his father, has offered 
a "memorial cup" to be given to the winner in the horse- 
race. There is something very racy in this offer. The old 
man has finished his course, and the son, with rare filial rev- 
erence, has put up a silver chalice to be contended for on the 
turf at Babylon. There is no disputing about tastes, and this 
proposal, which appears so odd to those not educated up to 
an appreciation of the aesthetics of the race-course, is doubt- 
less an exquisite touch of pathos testifying the respect of the 
son for the virtues of his honored father, and his own love 
for the sports of the field. I remember nothing so charm- 
ing, unless it be a fact that occurred in Northern New York 
some years ago. A good man had lived happily with an 
excellent wife until they were well on in years, when she 
died. He bethought him of some fitting memorial to place 
on her grave, and the happy thought struck him that the 
square ten-plate stove by which they had been comfortable 
through many long winters, would be just what she would 
like if she had a voice in the matter. He had the stove 
taken to the church-yard and planted over the remains of his 
companion, who sleeps quietly underneath it until this 'day. 



BABYLON AND FIRE ISLAND. 

Still a sojourner by the waters of Babylon. If one must 
be a prisoner, and grind at the mill as Samson did, there are 
many worse places than this cool and breezy shore on the 
south side of Long Island. There has not been an uncom- 
fortably warm day here this summer. The hotels are first 
class. The Argyle is the largest and most picturesque. I 
am at the Watson House, which Selah C. Smith and his 
sons have kept for many years, and have won a wide repute 
for their rooms and table. It is a family hotel, with broad 
piazzas, pleasing outlooks, ample shade : it is continually 
fanned by health-laden breezes from the sea; is perfectly 



1/2 I REN ALUS LETTERS. 

comfortable, clean and wholesome ; and any one who prefers 
quiet and good living to fashion and short commons may 
here take his ease in his own inn. 

THE MEMORIAL HORSE-RACE. 

In my last I told you that a gentleman recently made an 
orphan, and being addicted to the turf, had put up a memo- 
rial silver cup to be the prize in an approaching horse-race, 
the cup being a memorial of the honored father whom this 
afflicted son had recently followed to the grave. You thought 
it must be a grave joke : there could not be such a curiosity 
in horse-racing and filial reverence. But since I wrote, the 
offer has been advertised extensively, and the hand-bill was 
posted in the hotel where I am lodged, announcing in big 
letters the names of three horses entered for the race. Men 
sitting on the piazza laugh at the idea as immensely comical, 
and make all manner of fun of it. Last Saturday the races 
came off, and the first was for the memorial cup. It excited 
lively interest. 

" This is a very solemn occasion," remarked one who was 
waggishly inclined, and took in the absurdity of the pro- 
ceeding. 

Another one said, " No good will come of this ; it is too 
serious a matter to be making sport of." 

But for all this the race was run, and the cup was won by 
a horse recently from Philadelphia by the name of Kismet. 

Very likely the example may be followed, and sportsmen 
will revive the Grecian custom of celebrating the death of 
heroes with games and trials of speed and strength. It has 
nothing in it in common with Christian civilization, but there 
is not much of religion or civilization in tlie sports of the 
turf at the present time. They are mainly opportunities for 
gamblers and those unsuspecting and wealthy young sports 
who are the easy prey of impecunious swindlers. Only last 
week two jockeys were expelled from a " first-class" race- 
course near the city for bribing another to lose a race. In 
England it is necessary to pay a jockey so large a sum for his 
services as to make it hard for the other parties to buy him 



BABYLON AND FIRE ISLAND. 1 73 

off. And the standard of turf morals is no higher in this 
country than it is over the sea. It is therefore the better 
part of wisdom to keep clear of bets on horses as well as on 
everything else; for all is gambling, and an honest gambler 
is far more rare in this world than four-leafed clover, or snow 
in August. 

FIRE ISLAND AND ITS LANDLORD. 

Seven or eight miles across the Great South Bay is Fire 
Island, avast stretch of sand, on which is reared a lighthouse 
that has gladdened millions of eyes, seeing it as the first 
light greeting their sight since leaving port in Europe. 
Sometimes the incoming vessel passes near enough Montauk 
Point to make that light but more frequently Fire Island 
light is first to tell them the voyage is nearly over, and they 
will soon be in the bay and harbor of New York. About 
thirty years ago Mr. D. S. S. Sammis crossed the bay with 
a sloop-load of lumber, and having made himself owner of 
the beach for some miles, he built a modest hotel on the 
island. He was a hotel-keeper in Babylon, and his fame has 
widened from year to year, until now there are many thou- 
sands of people who cherish his name as of one who has 
ministered to their comfort when they came to him as 
strangers and he took them in. He has a heap of scrap- 
books and letters containing testimonials of regard and 
gratitude from the many who found in him a host who pro- 
vided for their wants. His house has gradually grown, 
though sand is not good soil for growth. Year after year 
has seen the old hotel enlarged ; neat cottages rising by the 
sides of it : a covered walk — a board of health — stretches 
from the bay on one side through the house down to the sea- 
side, across the island, here less than half a mile wide. On 
the beach a wide roof shelters the company from the sun, 
while the great and wide sea, beautiful in its brilliant hues, 
majestic in its roll, sublime and glorious in its mystery and 
might, heaves and tumbles, moans and surges at your feet. 
The visitors, old and young, revel on and in the sand. There 
sits a strong woman, as near the remorseless waves as she 



174 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

dares to sit, hugs her rubber wrap about her and lets the 
spray and the wave itself rush upon her, while the anxiety 
of strangers lest she be carried away as with a flood is evi- 
dently to her a source of secret satisfaction. Farther on a 
couple of young lovers, thinking they are sufficiently hidden 
by an umbrella, are sitting hand in hand, and looking out on 
the sea, apt emblem of the life on which they are about to 
set sail. 

Two stalwart men defy the billows and venture into the 
maddened waves. But they are like straws on the water, 
and are glad to escape with their lives. A life-boat and lines 
are on the edge of the sea ready for any emergency ; and if 
any of these maidens who have come down with bathing- 
dresses should, like Pharaoh's daughter, step into the water, 
they would put this life-saving apparatus into requisition. 
And by the way, once in, every five miles along the coast 
there is a Life-saving Station of the United States Govern- 
ment, kept manned and ready for shipwrecks from October 
to May. 

The wind, bracing and delightful, comes in from the ocean, 
laden with life and health, and permeates the lungs and 
limbs, stimulating the system, and putting new life into the 
aged, the infirm and the weary. Here are no trees, no drives, 
no races, no mountains ; water on the right of you, water on 
the left of you ; everywhere sand and sea : but it is always 
invigorating and delightful : no chills, no malaria, no hay- 
fever, no mineral springs : but plenty of health and company, 
and the summer slips away without a suspicion of excessive 
heat. 

It is not strange that an island so near to New York should 
be well known and valued by many of her citizens. The 
good people of Albany and Troy have long known the way 
hither, and made it their refuge. 

Mr. Sammis is a typical landlord, decidedly a character in 
his way : an old Long Islander himself, — as all my fathers 
were, — he knows the history of Long Island before it was in- 
vaded and overrun by hordes from the mainland, who now, 
with their palaces and equipages, have upset the traditional 



LONG ISLAND MINISTERS. 175 

quaintness and simplicity for which it was distinguished 
before and since the Revolution, and have now made it al- 
most as fashionable and uncomfortable as the rest of the 
world. 

Mr. Sammis, like the noted Boniface Cruttenden, of the 
Eagle Tavern, Albany, greets the coming guests with a cor- 
dial welcome : personally attends to their being well cared 
for; and when we took our leave of him he walked with us 
to the boat, cast off the line with his own hands, and as we 
were fairly under way, bade us a paternal adieu. 

We have our choice of mountain or sea-shore, and there 
are some to whom the inland atmosphere is more whole- 
some for a change than the smell of old ocean. Perhaps the 
change is better. . And they who live for most of the year in 
the interior will find greater benefit by coming to the beach. 
There are thousands of citizens whose business requires them 
to have their out-of-town residences within two or three 
hours of the city, so that they may go and come frequently 
and not lose the daily watch and care of their aftairs. Hence 
all the available coast, in comfortable reach, is adorned with 
villas of every conceivable style of architecture, and varying 
in cost and comfort according to the means and taste of the 
owner. The frequency with which these cottages, as they 
are called, though costing $100,000, change owners or occu- 
pants, is an evidence of the precarious tenure of wealth or 
the restless propensities of the people. 



LONG ISLAND MINISTERS. 

We drove out this morning to Islip, to call on the Rev. 
Mr. Allen, whom I mentioned as the Presbyterian pastor. 
He received us gladly, and welcomed us to as neat, comfort- 
able and interesting a village parsonage, church and chapel 
as one could wish to see. It had all the evidences of a wide- 
awake, thriving pastor and people. The three buildings 
stand in a line on the main street, painted in neutral tints, 



176 I RE N^ us LETTERS. 

and all in harmony; with lawn and shade-trees. Mr. Allen, 
a graduate of Yale College and Princeton Theological Semi- 
nary, came here five, years ago to this his first pastoral 
charge, and has already shown what a young man of ability, 
taste, and force can do in building up a church in a field 
that was far from promising when it came into his hands. 
Some of the old families of New York have made Islip their 
summer abode, and have cast in their lot and their mites with 
good effect, as all other summer sojourners ought to do 
everywhere, but for the most part do not. The Maitlands 
have made themselves remembered by their good works. I 
saw the name of my good friend Elliott F. Shepard, Esq., of 
New York City, on the books in one of the pews, and was 
pleased to hear of his interest and usefulness in this church. 
The spiritual blessings following the labors of Mr. Allen have 
been marked, and souls converted have been added to the 
church. What he has done and is doing, every young min- 
ister with the requisite equipment for the pulpit may do and 
ought to do. He may easily find a modest field of labor in 
the rural districts, throw himself wholly into the work, rouse 
and rally the people, surround himself with all the imple- 
ments of spiritual husbandry and make an indelible impres- 
sion on the community, build monuments in the hearts of 
men, and win souls to be seals of his ministry and stars in 
his immortal crown. 

In this same handsome village of Islip is the most unique, 
striking, and beautiful Episcopal church on Long Island, and 
there must be very few more singularly beautiful in the whole 
country. It has been recently erected and presented to the 
parish, with a rectory corresponding to it in picturesque 
eflfect, by the liberality of Mr. William K. Vanderbilt, a son 
of the railroad king. W. H. Vanderbilt. Its architecture is 
so peculiar that it requires a knowledge of terms such as are 
not at my command, to give a description of it, and you are 
therefore spared the attempt. The rector is the Rev. Dr. 
Reuben Riley, who was placed here in 1861, and here he has 
spent these twenty-two years, pointing his people heaven- 
ward, and "leading the way." He is universally beloved, 



LONG ISLAND MINISTERS. I77 

and it was pleasant to see the beautiful surroundings with 
which his life is crowned. The parish in which he labors with 
fidelity and success is largely increased in summer-time by 
the great number of wealthy families having countrj^-seats in 
this pleasant neighborhood, or thronging the spacious hotels 
and boarding-houses. There is the usual infelicity attend- 
ing these rural charges, that they are so much reduced in 
winter, and not always or often spiritually improved by the 
influx of summer company. This may be an exception to 
the general rule, for there seemed to me some evidences that 
the visitors seek to make themselves permanently useful to 
the church, as well as comfortable in their summer homes. 

When I studied English grammar, long time ago, we used 
Lindley Murray's book, and you may be surprised to learn 
that that celebrated grammarian lived in this very town of 
Islip, and here began that celebrated work which has vexed 
and helped so many youth in the art of speaking and writ- 
ing the English language correctly. He was a Quaker lawyer, 
and there are wills and deeds now in existence in this county 
of Suffolk which were drawn by his hand. Lindley Murray 
was a native of Lebanon County, Pa., and resided on Long 
Island during the Revolutionary war. Being a Tory, he 
went to England when the war was over, completed his 
grammar and published it there, and died near York, at 
Holdgate, in 1826. 

While in Islip Murray lived in the house with Judge Isaac 
Thompson, who was a warm patriot and suffered all but 
death at the hands of the British and their hired Hessians. 
They hung him on a tree, but were persuaded to let him 
down before he was dead because he had been a magistrate 
under the crown. The grammar-maker, being a royalist and 
a member of his family, also helped to protect him and his 
property. Scarcely any part of our land suffered more from 
the enemy during that long war of the Revolution than did 
this ill-fated island. In my library, to-day, are books that 
belonged to my great-grandfather, who was pastor of Hun- 
tington, fifteen miles only from the spot where I am writing; 
the British invaded the town, took possession of the church 
12 



178 IREN.-^US LETTERS. 

and used it as barracks, and the pastor's house for their 
officers' lodgings, mutilated the furniture, destroyed many 
of his books, and tore out portions of others, the remains 
of which I cherish not so much for their intrinsic value as 
being memorials of those bitter days through which our 
fathers passed when this nation was in the throes that pre- 
ceded its birth. Those same warriors returned to Hunting- 
ton in 1782, when the struggle for independence was virtually 
at an end, and pulled down the church, pitched their tents 
in the graveyard : used the gravestones for the bottoms of 
ovens, and the loaves of bread had the names of the dead in 
reverse on the under crust. My great-grandfather had now 
been recently buried there, and the redoubtable Colonel 
Thompson, commanding the troop, had his tent placed at 
the head of the grave of the venerable pastor, so that every 
time he went in or out, as he said, he could tread on the old 
rebel. The family of the old pastor fled at the approach of 
the British, but they had the forethought to drop the silver- 
plate into the well, which being very deep, like the one at 
Samaria, concealed it from the foe. After the war was over 
they returned and fished it up, and part of it is on my table 
just one hundred years since it was rescued from the deep. 
Also, now that we are "reminiscing," on the shelf of my 
writing-desk stands the Greek Testament which that same 
" old rebel " used, and which escaped the vandal hands of 
Colonel Thompson. The pastor was a fine classical scholar, 
and his son used this same volume, and his grandson, and 
his great-grandson, and his great-great-grandson ; and all of 
these five generations have their respective names inscribed 
on the blank page of this Greek Testament, which was printed 
in Edinburgh in 1740. 

This Colonel Thompson was a native of Concord, Mass., 
which place once bore the name of Rnmford. After the war 
his name was infamous by his barbarous course as a Tory 
chieftain, and he went to England and was honored with 
knighthood. Then he went to Bavaria and was created a 
count, and he took the name of Rumford, from his native 
place. Being a man of science and devoted to the pursuits 



LONG ISLAND MINISTERS. 1 79 

of natural philosophy, he invented at Leyden, in Holland, 
the electric jar which bears the name of the famous university 
of that city. 

The Long Island ministers in the Revolution were stanch 
patriots, except a few who were in connection with the 
Church of England. Dr. Buel was the Easthampton pastor, 
a very remarkable man, a fervent pulpit orator who would 
make a sensation in any parish. He was not afraid of the 
face of clay, but being a gentleman of courtly manners and 
ready wit he was always popular, even when rebuking sin. 
Sir William Erskine was in command of the British troops 
at Easthampton, and one Saturday issued an order for all the 
inhabitants who had teams to turn out the next day to do 
some hauling. Dr. Buel coiaitcnnatidcd the order ; and when 
Sir William called him to account. Dr. Buel said, " I am 
commander-in-chief on Sunday." The general laughed and 
sanctioned the countermand. This was the Dr. Buel who 
was preaching on the exceeding guilt of them who perish 
from a place so exalted in point of privilege as Easthampton, 
and in the ferv^or of his eloquence he said, " In that awful 
day the voice would go forth in the midst of the lost, Make 
room, make room, an Easthampton sinner is coming to judg- 
ment!" 

I wish this letter were not already too long, for I would 
like to write of the Long Island Indian preachers, some of 
whom were once famous and were heard with wonder on 
both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Their names are passing 
into oblivion, but they richly deserve to be had in remem- 
brance. Samson Occum was the most distinguished. Dr. 
Buel speaks of his preaching as " natural, free, clear and elo- 
quent." He was a poet, too, of no mean order, being the 
author of that tremendous hymn " Awak'd by Sinai's awful 
sound." One of his sermons was preached to an audience 
of only one, an Indian, and on the eve of his execution for 
murder. He addresses him as " Poor Moses" and tenderly 
invites him to the Saviour. Paul Cuffee was another, and 
Peter John another of these Indian preachers of whom time 
fails me to speak. 



i8o irenjEUS letters. 



EASTHAMPTON ON LONG ISLAND. 

About seventy-five years ago a party of ladies and gentle- 
men were bathing in the surf on the beach at Easthampton, 
nearly the eastern end of Long Island. 

A young clergyman walking on the sand some little dis- 
tance from the party of bathers was suddenly startled by 
cries of distress from the water. He perceived on the in- 
stant that some one had been carried out by the undertow, 
and the rest, panic-stricken, were unable to render aid. A 
stalwart young man and a strong swimmer, he rushed to the 
spot, flinging off his coat as he ran, plunged into the sea, 
found a young lady drowning, rescued her gallantly and 
brought her to the land. She was speedily restored. Lt was 
natural that such an incident should result in friendship, 
which ripened into affection and led to the marriage of the 
parties. The writer of these lines is the third of the children 
that followed this romantic union. So that from her who 
was rescued from the very jaws of death there have sprung 
children and children's children who have risen up to pro- 
nounce blessings on her name which is now lovingly borne 
in the fourth generation from the saved on this beach at 
Easthampton. I have just returned from the spot, and, in- 
spired by the delicious, bracing air, the sight of the great 
and wide sea, have been impelled to tell the story which has 
been a tradition, but as yet unpublished. 

' ' God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform ; 
He plants his footsteps in the sea," 

and in this case I can observe the Providence by which he 
led those young people to each other, that they might be the 
parents of a family to be trained for his service. Other 
steps might have led to the same result, but this was God's 
way, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Beautiful also, and 
never to be mentioned without joyful gratitude, that in the 
hour of mortal peril a strong and saving arm was near. 



EASTHAMPTON ON LONG ISLAND. l8l 

From those parents I have heard traditions of Long Island, 
and especially of the East End, and Easthampton more than 
all, out of which long chapters of intense religious interest 
might be drawn. Long before I ever saw it, I was told of 
the first minister of the church in Easthampton, Mr. James, 
who gave very singular directions before his death in regard 
to his burial. It was usual in those days to bury the dead 
with their heads to the west, the sentiment being prevalent 
that at the last great day the Son of man would come in the 
east, and the dead would rise with their faces toward him. 
Mr. James gave directions that his body should be laid in the 
eastern part of the burial-ground, with his head to the east, 
that in the resurrection morn he might look his congregation 
in the face as he arose with them to judgment ! The super- 
stition and the ignorance apparent in this arrangement must 
be overlooked in the manifest desire on his part to impress 
his people with the fact that he, their pastor, would confront 
them once more when they were to answer for the improve- 
ment they had made of his instructions. It was to the same 
purpose that Dr. Payson, of Portland, had a paper laid upon 
his breast in his open coffin, that all his people as they looked 
their last look might read the solemn admonition, " Remem- 
ber the words that I said unto you while I was yet with you." 
The grave of the Easthampton pastor is still preserved with 
its headstone, and as the inclosure has been enlarged, it is 
not now on the outer eastern row of graves as it was origi- 
nally, and as it was when I saw it first nearly half a century 
ago. The moss-covered tombstone bears this inscription, 
which I made out with difficulty, and copied word for word: 

Mr, 
Thomas 

James, dyed 
THE i6th day of 

Jvne, in the 
yeare 1696. HE 

was Ministar 
of THE gospel 

and Pastvre 

of the Chvrch 

of Christ. 



1 82 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

When we hear so much as we do now of the prevalent 
unbelief of the present age, it is well to remember that 
just after the war there was far more positive and aggres- 
sive infidelity in the land than there is at this day. In East- 
hampton there was a club of infidels, at the head of which 
was the leading physician of the place. In Newburg on 
the Hudson there was a large society of blatant infidels 
who sought notoriety by open sacrilege in putting contempt 
upon the holy rites of the Christian religion. Dr. Johnston, 
the pastor of the First Church, made a record of the awful 
deaths which overtook the most of the members of that 
miserable crew, and one could not read the history without 
horror. I heard him read it, and I am very certain there is 
no community in the State of New York now which could 
furnish the facts for such a legend of infidelity, blasphemy 
and death. Therefore I assume that the present degenerate 
age is better than the past, and there is no reason to suppose 
that faith is dying out of the world. 

Dr. Lyman Beecher was pastor in Easthampton in the first 
decade of this century, but he did not make so strong an im- 
pression as he made afterwards in Litchfield and Boston. 
Traditions are yet repeated of his eccentricities and of his 
attainments in the apostolic pursuit of fishing. Among the 
more recent preachers and pastors were S. R. Ely, E. C. 
Wines, Mr. Mershon and the present excellent incumbent, 
Mr. Stokes, who has fed this flock by the sea for the term of 
fourteen years. The Rev. Dr. Strickland, who died but a 
few weeks ago, was the highly useful and respected pastor of 
the adjoining parish of Bridgehampton, and made his mark 
all over the east end of the island. 

No village in the State of New York has undergone less 
change by the influence of modern improvement than East- 
hampton. Its one broad street, its windmills, its geese and 
its graveyard, its antique, quaint and peculiar residences, 
hold their own without fear or shame. Hundreds of city 
people find rest and delight in its cool, sequestered shades 
during the heats of summer, and seek the gently sloping 
beach for grateful bathing in the surf. The house in which 



SHELTER ISLAND AND IVHITEFIELD. 1 83 

" home, Sweet Home" was composed is still pointed out to 
inquiring strangers ; indeed, two are rivals for the honor, and 
you take your choice. Artists have made sketches of the 
picturesque interiors and exteriors of the old habitations that 
remain as specimens of what was elegant in its day, and mag- 
azines have been adorned with the illustrations. Repose is 
the genius of the place. Nothing is in haste. Not a minute 
faster does time go now than it did ten years ago when I was 
here, and having need to use the telegraph found the office 
closed, with a notice that the operator had gone crabbing. 
Now I went to the barber's and a notice on the shop-door 
informed customers that he was in town every other day. It 
is very restful to be in such a place. No rude alarm disturbs 
the quiet of this venerable retreat. It never yet has heard 
that most unearthly of all earthly sounds, the railroad shriek. 
The clear, sweet bugle-blast announces the coming of the 
post-coach, also the peripatetic vender of clams. Rarely 
does the inhabitant say, " I am sick." Health, peace, content 
and comfort dwell here from age to age, the same in sub- 
stance as it was in the beginning. The forefathers of the 
hamlet sleep in the country churchyard, successive gener- 
ations lie by their side, all waiting, with their first pastor, 
for the last trump to " break up old marble " and call them 
to the grand assize. 



SHELTER ISLAND AND WHITEFIELD. 

I WAS surprised to find Shelter Island in such an advanced 
stage of modern improvement. It is in the eastern part of 
Long Island Sound, and affords the most delightful sites for 
residences, which are being rapidly taken up for summer 
cottages. 

Right opposite to Greenport, from which the ferry-boat 
comes hourly, is the Prospect House. A whole village of 
cottages, perhaps a hundred in number, surrounds it, peeping 
out from beneath the shade of big trees, or looking forth 



1 84 IREN^US LETTERS. 

from the banks on the great waters. The town is owned by 
an association which sells lots on conditions that secure per- 
fect sanitary cautions, and freedom from all the evils result- 
ing from the sale of liquors or from gambling. These cot- 
tages are in endless varieties of artistic beauty, some of them 
costing but a few hundred dollars and others many thou- 
sands. 

Shelter Island has a history, and the names of Sylvester, 
Gardner, Deering, Nichols, Havens, Conkling, Huntting are 
handed down among the early inhabitants. There are few 
persons now living who know that this island was once the 
scene of Whitefield's labors, and that here were great re- 
vivals of religion as long ago as the year 1764. 

Samuel L'Hommedieu, Esq., of Sag Harbor, who died in 
1834, and one of the many who were converted under White- 
field's preaching, was a personal acquaintance of my father, 
who was the Sag Harbor minister from 1806 to 1809. They 
often conversed of Mr. Whitefield and his wonderful powers 
as a preacher. Mr. L'Hommedieu was one of the men who 
made a raft and conveyed Mr. Whitefield upon it from 
Southold across to Shelter Island. It is something to have 
heard accounts of Whitefield's eloquence from one who 
often listened to him and by him was actually led to the ser- 
vice of Christ. In that year (1764) this distinguished servant 
of God made a tour on Long Island, everywhere preaching 
the Word. And multitudes believed on the Lord because of 
his sermons. Dr. Gillies says in his Life of the great preach- 
er that Whitefield having left New York (in January), he 
preached at Easthampton, Bridgehampton and Southold 
on Long Island and Shelter Island. His headquarters were 
at the hospitable mansion of Thomas Deering, Esq., on this 
island, and in the Deering family are preserved two letters 
which Whitefield wrote to Mr. Deering. His letters are not 
remarkable for the information they impart, but are very 
interesting illustrations of the man who was undoubtedly one 
of the most wonderful religious orators the world ever pro- 
duced. He writes to Mr. Deering: 



SHELTER ISLAND AND WHITEFIELD. 1 8$ 

*'My Dear Sir: What a winding world do we live in ! I 
have been a good way round, and now am come within sight 
of your house again. Yesterday the boat and all was just 
gone. To-day, I trust some have felt themselves undone — 
one, upon the road we overtook, sweetly, sorely wounded. 
Grace ! Grace ! I am now come to wait for sailing. Will you 
send a poor but willing pilgrim the promised sea provisions ? 
God feed you and yours with the bread that cometh down 
from heaven ! A thousand thanks for all favors. Add to 
my obligations by continuing to pray for my dear friend. 
" Yours in the never-failing Jesus, G. W." 

The following letter was written by Whitefield in reply to 
one from Mr. Deering : 

" Boston, May 2, 1764. 

"And is Shelter Island become a Patmos ? It seems so 
by my dear friend's letter. Blessed be God! Blessed be 
God ! What cannot a God in Christ do for his people ! All 
things well. Though he leads men seemingly in a round- 
about, yet it is a right way. Though they pass through the 
fire, yet it does not consume; though through deep, yea, very 
deep waters, yet it does not overwhelm so as to destroy 
them. And all these are only earnests of good things to 
come. How many assurances that we shall at last be car- 
ried through the Jordan of death, and safely landed in the 
Canaan of everlasting rest ! Surely he cannot be far from 
them now. Such frequent shocks that your earthly taber- 
nacle and mine meet with must necessarily loosen the silver 
cords that hold them up. What then? We have a house not 
made with hands, — eternal — in the heavens. Though we can- 
not join in singing, we can in repeating 

" ' By Thee we shall 

Break through them all, 
And sing the song of Moses.' 

" Methinks I hear you say Amen ! Hallelujah ! — and why } 
Because his mercy endureth forever. 

" I could enlarge, but must away to my throne. It is but 
seldom I can climb so high. But an infinitely condescend- 



1 86 IREN^-EUS LETTERS. 

ing Jesus vouchsafes to smile upon my feeble labors, here 
and elsewhere. Who knows but I may ere long come your 
way? Perhaps the cloud may point toward Patmos. Mr. 
Wright will be glad. He is better, and sends most cordial 
respects. My poor prayers constantly wait upon your whole 
self, Mr. Adams, and your rising offspring, 

" In sure and certain hope, if we never meet in this world, 
of a glorious resurrection to eternal life in that which is to 
come, I subscribe myself, very dear sir, your truly affec. 
sympathizing friend and willing servant, in our common, 
never-failing Lord. G. Whitefield." 

These letters were written and this Long Island tour was 
made during Whitefield's sixth visit to America. He re- 
turned to England and came back to our shores again in 
1769. He died in 1770. In Exeter, N. H., he preached two 
hours, and the same day went to Newburyport, Mass., and 
addressed a great crowd assembled to meet him. The next 
day, September 30, he died of asthma. Under the pulpit of 
the Federal Street church, where he had preached, his body 
was buried. Seventy-five years afterwards I was allowed to 
enter the sepulchre and to view the bones of this illustrious 
man. I took his skull in my hands. The forehead was so 
broad that I could not grasp it with a span. Lord, what is 
man? This skull was once aflame with words that burn. 
Beneath these ribs a noble heart was beating, throbbing, 
breaking with love for Jesus Christ and the souls of men. 
What eloquent lips were once here ! We have living preach- 
ers who are as wise in winning souls, and who turn as many 
to righteousness as Whitefield, but we have not had since he 
died any man of whose seraphic eloquence such marvels are 
told. 

Sitting on the broad piazza of this Prospect House on 
Shelter Island, and knowing that there were not at the time 
of Whitefield's visit more than two or three hundred people 
on the island, I am filled with admiring wonder that his 
footsteps should have been led hither, and his name iden- 
tified with the history of this beautiful spot. 



SHELTER ISLAND AND WHITEFIELD. 1 87 
POSTSCRIPT. 

Mr. Sylvester was the principal proprietor of Shelter Isl- 
and, which was first settled about 1652. It was organized as 
a district township in 1730. Mr. Sylvester superintended 
the building of the first church, and he died in 1752, as ap- 
pears from his funeral sermon preached by Rev. Mr. Troop, 
of Southold, and published in Boston. The church stood till 
1 8 16, when a new one was built, and in it was put the pulpit 
that had been in the Rutgers Street church, New York City. 

A very interesting event occurred at Shelter Island last 
week. The papers give accounts of the unveiling of a monu- 
ment at Shelter Island by Mary and Phoebe Gardiner Hors- 
ford, daughters of Professor E. N. Horsford, of Harvard 
University, to the memory of Nathaniel Sylvester. Many 
prominent people of New York, Brooklyn, and Connecticut 
were present. The exercises included an opening prayer by 
the Rev. Dr. Storrs, an address on the life of Nathaniel Sylves 
ter by Professor Horsford, the reading of a hymn contributed 
by J. G. Whittier, and a benediction by the Rev. Dr. Whit- 
taker. 

The monument is a broad stone tablet mounted on three 
stone pillars, and the whole rests upon a platform which is 
reached by three steps. The slab is suitably inscribed. 
Upon the surface of the stone there is carved a family regis- 
ter and a table of the proprietors of the island from the Man- 
hasset tribe of Indians down to Samuel Smith Gardiner, 
grandfather of Mary and Phoebe Gardiner Horsford. 

The island was originally a possession of James Farrett, 
who had received it together with Robin's Island, from Wil- 
liam, Earl of Sterling. Stephen Goodyear purchased both 
from Farrett, and finally sold Shelter Island to Sylvester, 
who afterwards got deeds of confirmation from the Indians. 
These and several other papers of interest are still in the 
possession of the Sylvester descendants. 

The name of the tribe of Indians that originally occupied 
the island was Manhasset, and the Indian name of the island, 
variously written, signified " the island sheltered by islands," 
whence it was called Shelter Island. 



1 88 IR EN ALUS LETTERS. 



SUNDAY WITH A WESTERN FARMER. 

"Taking mine ease in mine inn," the Leland, in Spring- 
field, 111., on Saturday afternoon, too rainy to go out and 
very tired of the Assembly, I was roused by a visitor who 
sent up his name. It was Mr. B. F. McVeigh. My first 
thought was of the late Attorney-General of the United 
States. He came up to my chamber, and proved to be a 
farmer from the prairies, — a working farmer, — whom I wel- 
comed cordially, and he said : 

"You will think I am very presuming, a stranger and a 
plain farmer-man, to come in upon you this way; but I take 
the New York Observer." 

" Stop a moment," I interposed ; " if that is so, you are all 
right and I am glad to see you ; no apologies, if you please." 

" Yes," he began again, " my wife and I read you every 
week, and when we saw that you were here at the Assembly 
we just made up our minds that we must have you in our 
house before you get away. We live four miles out of 
Springfield, and are the plainest kind of farming people 
and we want you to say when you will come out and spend 
the night and as much time as you can spare ; can't you go 
home with me this afternoon and spend Sunday?" 

" No, I cannot ; I am engaged to supper with the Governor 
of the State at the Executive Mansion this evening, to meet 
several others, and — " 

"Well," he said, "it will be a contrast to my house from 
the Governor's; but if you will come and go to church with 
us to-morrow, preach or address the young people — will you 
come .'' Just to think of it : how good it would be !" 

The frankness and earnestness of the man quite took my 
heart, and I said: " What will all the rest say? I have re- 
fused well on toward a score of invitations to places all along 
the road from Chicago to St. Louis; but, if the rain holds 
up, I will go to your house to morrow." 

The next morning, Sabbath morning, I opened the shutter 



SUNDAY WITH A WESTERN FARMER. 1 89 

anxiously, and the brightest of spring sunshine was glowing 
over the world. At nine o'clock my new friend was at the 
door with a stout span of horses before a stout spring-wagon, 
and we set out to ride through the mud from Springfield to 
Round Prairie. 

Mud — through the mud did I say ? Such mud I never 
saw since I waded in Dr. McFeeter's book on the " Origin of 
Sin" : that was a continent of mud. My friend at once told 
me, for my comfort, that the roads are " not one per cent as 
bad as they were a few weeks ago ; we have tried every kind 
of road-bed in vain ; they all sink out of sight; we give it 
up and call it the lost cause." 

By dint of tight holding on I kept from falling out, 
when one wheel sank beyond the hub, and the strong team 
with a jerk brought it up just as the other went into the 
depths, and then both slumped into a hole, and as the 
horses braced to the work and lifted it out, I went back with 
a snap and feared I was broken into two pieces. All the 
country had been recently flooded. The streams had been 
swollen, carrying fences away and bridges, and the raging 
Sangamon swelled the Illinois River, and this the Father of 
Waters, making the mighty inundation of which we have 
read. All the way we were passing between as beautiful 
farms as the American sun shines on. A rich nursery 
has made a Scotchman wealthy, and Mill's stock-farm is 
famous ; groves of fine trees, rolling fields that need no 
draining; wheat now breast-high will yield forty or fifty 
bushels to the acre ; corn just springing up will give the 
farmer fifty or sixty bushels for every acre. And all these 
farms would be very cheap at a hundred dollars an acre, but 
they are not for sale. I asked my friend to tell me what 
led him hither, and how he and the world got on together. 

"Hold fast!" he said, as we pitched into an unfathomed 
mud-hole; "the fact is I have to put four horses on some- 
times, so that the leaders can pull the wheelers out. Now 
we go — but you will not care to hear me." 

" Tell me all about it." 

" Well, I was working at a trade in New York City thirty- 
five years ago, and I saw no prospect of doing more than 



IQO IRENMUS LETTERS. 

just earning my bread. I did save a little ; came up to Al- 
bany on an opposition steamboat for twelve and a half cents, 
on the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and when I got to Chicago 
started South with only a five-dollar gold piece. I walked 
here, and offered to pay for my food and lodgings by the way 
out of the five dollars, but it was whole when I got here ; 
hired out by the month, laid up all I could save, went back 
to New York and got married and brought my wife out ; 
when I had saved a thousand dollars, bought this farm — two 
hundred acres." 

" This farm ?" 

" Yes ; this is mine. These great trees I have left stand- 
ing, and the children from the city sometimes have picnics 
under the shade. There is my house ; I have paid for the 
whole. That's my wife by the window; three sons and three 
daughters. There is nothing a farmer needs that we want." 

By this time we had reached the platform, near the front 
door-yard filled with shrubbery and trees : roses in bloom, 
snowball-bushes white with bloom — as neat and comfortable 
a home as any one requires. We entered, and the good wife 
gave me a cordial greeting. She was ready for church, 
where the children were all gone to Sabbath-school. She 
joined us in the wagon and we rode on to the church, and in 
five minutes I was speaking to the assembled youth of the 
congregation. I spoke till the minister expected (not the 
pastor, who was absent, but the Rev. William Sterling, of 
Williamsport, Pa.) came and preached an excellent discourse. 
After service the people — all farmers and their families — 
lingered and exchanged greetings, and took me by the hand : 
and I was astonished to find friends from the East whose 
parents I had known and loved. 

The Rev. Dr. John Johnstone was the fifty years' pastor of 
Newburg, N. Y. There I knew him and his in my early 
ministry. Here in Illinois I found among these matrons one 
of Dr. Johnstone's granddaughters, who presented to me her 
daughter, and the Sterlings of Newburg are here in the son 
of the old Scotchman and the son's sons. 

Pleasant was the interchange of neighborly news among 
these families who live miles apart and seldom meet except 



SUN DA Y WITH A WESTERN FARMER. I9I 

at the church. And then we went home. Mr. McVeigh 
took with him Mr. George E. Kalb, an intelligent young 
farmer, with his young wife and their babe, and we thus 
had a large family gathering around the bountiful dinner- 
table. I would like to give you a list of the good gifts of God 
with which that table was loaded, besides the substantial 
dishes of beef and vegetables, four kinds of pickles and four 
of preserves; nice cake and pie, and stewed tomatoes, tea, 
coffee, and various condiments — a dinner fit to " set before a 
king." We adjourned from the dinner-table to the parlor, 
adorned with pictures, piano, handsome books, and the Neiu 
York Observer, which they told me had been their instructor 
and entertainment through their housekeeping life. I 
learned that all the families for miles around are religious 
families, all the young people as well as the parents members 
of the church, and poverty or drunkeimess almost wholly 
unknown. The children are better taught in the public 
schools than in the rural districts of the East, and higher 
wages paid to the teachers. My friend Mr. McVeigh, as I 
drew out of him, visits the school as one of the trustees 
once at least a week, and works in every way to make him- 
self useful. 

If he is hurt in his feelings by my putting him into the 
paper, he must bear it for the sake of the example he is of 
American life, the best type of it ; of the start, the progress, 
the push, the industry, perfect temperance, and the intelli- 
gent cultivation of the ground and the mind. 

What he is — an independent, American Christian farmer — 
every American young man may become. His two hundred 
acres, his barns, his lots of horses and cattle, — very handsome 
they are, — his rotation of crops, — he got one dollar and twen- 
ty-five cents a bushel for his wheat last week, — these are the 
evidences of his material prosperity, and I believe he enjoys 
with his household the blessing of God that maketh rich and 
addeth no sorrow. 

Toward evening we rode back to the city. To my friends 
in the Leland I related the incidents of the day, and they 
suggested that I should write them to you. 



192 IRENMUS LETTERS. 



THE HEART OF THE CATSKILLS. 

I AM writing in the Grand Hotel, on Summit Mountain, in 
the midst of the Catskills. It is not on the pinnacle of the 
loftiest, for many tower above me with such majesty as to 
cause one at this height of two thousand feet, to feel him- 
self on a plain whence Alps on Alps arise. 

Since the railroad system pierced the mountain system the 
ascent to these sublime seats is as easy as was the descent in 
days of old. I took my seat at New York and without change 
of car was brought to the door of this house, through scenes 
of beauty, sublimity and grandeur. The morning papers 
which were to relieve the tedium of the journey were actually 
unopened, for each moment of travel unfolded a new leaf in 
God's great book of Nature, so grand, so new, so exciting, 
that the journey was one delightful morning of high converse 
with Him who holds the rivers and the hills in his hands ! 
And now as I write, the mountains stand about me, in silent 
grandeur, as if this were the vast amphitheatre for the world's 
millions to meet in, when He shall come in whose presence 
the mountains are to flow down and the hills to melt like 
wax. 

To the east of us the sky is propped by the lofty crest of 
the highest of all the Catskill Mountains. It bears the inex- 
pressive name of Slide. Three other mighty bulwarks of this 
inclosure are Bear, Bread and Panther, while peaks and 
ridges and ranges are all around, a part of the literature and 
art-history of the country. Before us is the long and lofty 
range of Belle Air, its summit and sides densely wooded and 
singularly indented with huge hollows filled with dark 
shadows, while the sun is shining on all the surface. Hun- 
dreds of acres are cleared and tilled, the farms creeping from 
the valleys along up the sides as in the high Alps. Looking 
westward, we have the valley of the Delaware, a wealth of 
hills and forests and farms, of such variety, beauty and mag- 
nificence that the eye rejoices in the panoramas as a perpetual 



THE HEART OF THE CATSKILLS. 1 93 

delight. Those glimpses of bright water reveal the tributa- 
ries of the Delaware River, while on our left the streams are 
flowing into Esopus Creek in the Ulster Valley, and so on 
into the Hudson. The divide is at our feet, for we are on 
the water-shed, and a chip thrown to the right travels on the 
stream one way to the sea, and thrown to the left reaches it 
no less surely by the other. 

To convey any adequate idea of the extent and magnifi- 
cence of such a view is simply impossible, and to make the 
attempt is only to pile long words upon each other, like hills 
on hills. The mountains of Switzerland are far higher and 
more sublime: clad in white raiment, celestial beauty crowns 
them with radiance and glory that eye hath not seen else- 
where : the glaciers, — " frozen cataracts, torrents that heard a 
mighty voice and stopped amid their maddest plunge," — ava- 
lanches clothed with terror and with thunder rushing amain 
down — these are not seen or heard in this Switzerland of 
New York : but if there lies before the weary pilgrim among 
the lakes and crags and summits of the land of Tell a sight 
more lovely, picturesque — yes, and more satisfying and mem- 
orable than this in which I seem to be floating as I write, 
and less than six hours' easy ride from my own door, then 
I have failed to find it in three successive tours of explora- 
tion through the sublimest scenery of the Old World. Hence 
it is that clergymen who are necessarily students of God's 
revelation in his written Word rejoice in sitting at his feet 
where he reveals himself so gloriously in his Works. His 
Book of Inspiration often quotes from this broader page of 
Revelation. " Before the mountains were brought forth," 
etc. " Thy righteousness is like the great mountains." " His 
foundation is in the holy mountains." " Praise the Lord, 
mountains and all hills, his glory is above the earth and 
heaven." "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so 
the Lord is round about his people forever." And so in 
many pages of the divine word mountains are like great pic- 
tures, illustrations of the attributes which belong to the Infi- 
nite, Eternal and Unchangeable God. "The sea is his and 
he made it," an emblem of his Eternity, Mystery, Majesty 



194 iRENyEUS LETTERS. 

and Might. So the mountains in their unbroken silence, like 
the stars, with no speech nor voice, are always eloquent in 
their Creator's praise. I know not which most to admire, as 
I lift up mine eyes to these hills, their beauty or their sublim- 
ity. As I look off to the east, their grandeur awes me till I 
turn to the west, where a world of wondrous loveliness lies 
in the lights and shadows of the sinking sun. There is a 
"bridal of the earth and sky." Heaven and hills kiss each 
other and melt into one. 

On one of these evenings, half an hour before sunset, after 
a bright day, a black thunder-storm swept up the valley of the 
Delaware. Soon it blotted out the sun and deluged the 
mountains until it appeared as if the hotel might be washed 
down into the valley. When the storm reached the Shan- 
daken Valley in the east and rested on Slide and Panther 
Mountains, the sun burst forth beneath its track, and spanned 
its dark expanse with two brilliant rainbows. Rain still fell 
in torrents, lightnings flamed beneath the rainbows from 
horizon to horizon, and the sun blazed with noontide splen- 
dor from the west. All were gathered on the porch to wit- 
ness the sublime spectacle which might not be repeated in a 
lifetime, the world illumined by the sun, the lightnings and 
the rainbows, clothed in garments of gorgeous colors, 
adorned with the splendors of a new heaven and a new earth. 

When the moon was full in this August, the heavens as- 
sumed the peculiar appearance called a mackerel sky. But 
instead of long rifts of cloud in successive layers, the whole 
concave was embossed with white shields, infinite in number, 
each one an illumined picture; and we stood, hundreds, un- 
der the open canopy of heaven, gazing upwards as if we were 
beneath the dome of the great Cathedral of the Universe, 
which needeth not the sun or moon to give it light. On such 
an elevation as this one seems to be between the earth and 
sky, and marvels whether the one or the other most declares 
the power, the wisdom and glory of Him who rides on the 
circle of the heavens, and gilds the mountains with the 
brightness as he passes by. 

What wonderful cloud-effects are constantly before our 



BULL-FIGHTS, PRIZE-FIGHTS, ETC. 1 95 

admiring eyes! As if some angelic artist, greater than An- 
gelo of the " Eternal City," had stretched his canvas over the 
globe, and flung upon it with skill divine his colors which 
excel in strength. The hand that made them is divine. 

The everlasting hills ! They are here to stay. How they 
speak of the eternity of Him who laid their foundations! 
Kingdoms pass away : tribes, nations, dynasties flow along 
like these babbling streams, but the great mountains, solemn, 
sublime and silent, are here always. 

And how good they are as well as great. They gather the 
clouds on their heads and along their wooded sides, and 
the snowcometh down and the rain from heaven : the rills and 
brooks and rivers water the earth, and make it bud and blos- 
som, to give bread to the sons and daughters of men. The 
strength of the hills is His. And blessed be his name for 
ever and ever ! 



BULL-FIGHTS, PRIZE-FIGHTS AND OTHER 
POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

When I was in Spain — that is a good way to begin a letter ; 
it tells at once that the writer has travelled in foreign parts 
and ought to have something to say — when I was in Spain I 
heard a great deal about bull-fights ; and returning, was 
often asked if I went to see them. To this question it was 
my pleasure to be able to answer No. And when further 
asked why I did not go, I said : " For three good and sufficient 
reasons. First, they are bloody exhibitions, and would there- 
fore disgust and not entertain me; second they always occur 
on Sunday, and it is against my views of propriety to attend 
such places on that day; and third, there was not a bull-fight 
in Spain while I was there. They are given in hot weather 
only, and I was not there in summer." 

But would you have attended if you could have seen one 
on a week-day ? 

" Certainly not. Believing them to be demoralizing and 



196 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

brutal, unworthy of a civilized people, I would not go near 
them." But there is no accounting for tastes. I met a re- 
fined and delicate American lady who with her husband was 
travelling in Spain. His business had detained them in 
Madrid through the summer, and they had frequent oppor- 
tunities of seeing bull-fights, which she enjoyed amazingly. 
He was a splendid specimen of man, six feet high and well 
proportioned, one whom you would select as a champion to 
enter the lists in a tournament. But he could not bear to 
look at these fights which afforded such rapturous pleasure 
to this pretty little wife of his. She laughed at his squeam- 
ishness, as she called it, and declared that a bull-fight was 
far more interesting to her than to see a horse-race or two 
men knocking each other out with their fists. 

I met also in Spain the wife of an American clergyman 
who expressed the liveliest satisfaction in attending bull- 
fights, and she mentioned some particularly ghastly scenes 
that gave me uneasy sensations in the stomach, while she 
seemed to be in ecstasy. Perhaps ladies do not take more 
delight in these bloody scenes than the sterner sex, but they 
are more fond of recounting their experiences in the ring, 
perhaps because it proves them superior to those weaknesses 
which in our judgment are ornaments and not defects in 
human character. 

It cannot be truthfully denied that there is a tendency in 
our civilization toward the enjoyment of cruel and bloody 
games. If true, it is a bad sign. The decline of Roman 
strength and power was signalized by such exhibitions, where 
the lives of men and beasts were flung away in horrid com- 
bats to make sport for the people. Reverence for life is one 
of the highest types of Christian civilization : not human 
life only, but for everything that lives. And our gentle poet 
Covvper was not morbid when he said he would not have for 
a friend the man who would needlessly tread on a worm. 
Sensitiveness to the feelings of other people is a mark of 
high birth and breeding, and only the low, coarse and brutal 
despise the sentiment. Gentleness is one of the attributes 
of real greatness. 



BULL-FIGHTS, PRIZE-FIGHTS, ETC. 197 

This is not a popular doctrine of the age. We have re- 
cently had a judicial decision in the courts of this city that is 
more in accordance with the sense of the times. The law for- 
bids prize-fighting. But the lovers of that amusement had 
contrived to evade the law by having the fights with gloves, 
'falsely so called so far as they are fitted to prevent injury to 
tiie combatants. Two lusty fellows began a combat in the 
presence of a multitude who had paid for admission to see 
the fun. They had fought but a few minutes when the police 
interfered and arrested the men. Brought up for trial, they 
contended it was not a prize-fight, but merely a friendly set- 
to. And the learned judge made a decision which has not 
been equalled since the time of Solon for strictness of con- 
struction. The amount of it was that if they struck each 
other very hard they would be liable to the penalty, but a 
reasonable amount of sparring without getting mad was not 
illegal. So the sport goes on. Nor is the enjoyment of this 
amusement confined to the rude, ignorant and unkempt 
masses, the terror of society, who may some day burst out 
of their dens and fill the streets with violence and blood. 
The prize-fights of our day, like the old gladiator spectacles 
of Italy and the modern bull-fights of Spain, are attended 
and hugely enjoyed by thousands of men who are supposed 
to be ornaments of society, good husbands and brothers. 
Their tastes are certainly depraved, and there is no account- 
ing for them. 

No civilized Christian wants to have bull-fights and prize- 
fights domesticated among us as popular amusements. In- 
stinctively the moral sense revolts from the suggestion. Yet 
it is possible that our admiration of physical prowess may 
lead to the cultivation of games and plays whose most pro- 
nounced features are violence and blood. Woman glories in 
the vigor of men. She is naturally a hero-worshipper. The 
Rape of the Sabines is a myth, born of this passion of woman 
for a conqueror. The Lord taketh no pleasure in the legs of 
a man, but the athlete is the admiration of the multitude. 
There is a genuine danger that this passion for the exhibition 
of strength and agility, and the applause always accorded to 



198 IREN^US LETTERS. 

the conqueror, may run away with the judgment and make 
the culture of the muscle a higher study than that of the 
mind. These things ought to be done and the others not 
left undone. In the midst is the way of safety. But the 
hardest of all ways to travel is that between extremes. The 
care of the body is neglected far too much. It is rare to 
find nowadays a youth with a perfectly sound body. The 
training he needs is what he does not care to go through, 
except to be a champion. Thus a few only are chosen. The 
many will not strive unless they can win, and the winners are 
not many. 

Our young people do not play as much as they should. 
Athletic games are to be encouraged. They tend to health, 
long life, fitting men to endure hardness as good soldiers. 
Every man who has hardened his muscles, expanded his chest 
and cultivated his back-bone is all the better for the struggles 
and burdens of life. Ministers of the gospel would have less 
liver-complaints and lung-disease and fewer break-downs if 
they had made themselves more athletic when they were 
young students. Use the world as not abusing it. There is 
no need of being ferocious and brutal in order to be the 
champion ball-player. Let your moderation be known. 
Strive lawfully. And in so doing there shall be great reward. 



THE HERO OF JACOB'S WELL. 

AN ADVENTURE WITH BEDOUIN ARABS. 

In company last evening the conversation naturally turned 
upon the Arabs and their spears, so terrible just now in the 
Soudan. I remarked that I was an expert on that subject, 
having had a fearful experience with Arabs and their spears 
some years ago while travelling in the East. None present 
had recollections of the incident, and the story was called 
for with such importunity as could not be kindly resisted. 



THE HERO OF JACOB'S WELL. 1 99 

"But it was all published in the ' Letters' at the time," I 
said. 

"Yes, but few of us were then old enough to read, and the 
old ones have forgotten all about it." 

" Thank you," I replied ; " that encourages me to renew 
the sad remembrance of the most frightful scene in a long 
and varied lifetime. 

" While at Constantinople the Hon. George P. Marsh, 
U. S. Minister in Turke\', warned me not to attempt to travel 
in Palestine. The Crimean war was then coming on. The 
Arab population in Syria and Palestine were breaking out 
into lawless violence, and no Frank or European was safe. 
But we believed the reports exaggerated, and determined to 
take the risks. Coming by ship to Beyrut, we journeyed 
with tents and horses to Sidon and Tyre and Nazareth, and 
by this time had fearful evidence of the unsettled state of 
the country. At Beyrut the Rev. S. H. Calhoun, and at 
Sidon Dr. William. H. Thompson had joined our party, con- 
sisting of Mr. Groesbeck, of Cincinnati, Rev. George E. Hill, 
of Boston, Rev. Chester N. Righter, of New Jersey, and my- 
self. At Nazareth we engaged an armed guard to escort us 
to Nablous, the ancient Shechem. Here we heard such fear- 
ful reports of the Bedouins burning villages, robbing and 
murdering the people, that we came to a halt, and were vir- 
tually shut up two or three days. The valiant guard declined 
to go forward. Our muleteers sent us word that they would 
go no farther. We applied to the Governor of Nablous for 
an escort, but he could do nothing for us. Our dragoman 
proved to be the greatest coward in the party. We were 
compelled to be patient and improve the time by studying 
the objects of sacred interest in and around this famous old 
town. 

" Now, Jacob's Well was there. There is no spot in Pales- 
tine more definitely settled upon as the original Jacob's Well 
than this. The Bible account of its location is very clear ; 
the great value placed upon wells in early times and the 
easy tradition that would preserve the name of so important 
a possession leave us in no doubt as to the locality. Our 



200 IREN^US LETTERS. 

party was under the care of the dragoman. A lad and a poor 
fellow from the town hung on as camp-followers : running 
behind the party, who were all mounted. Not thinking of 
any danger in the immediate vicinity of Nablous, we left our 
pistols at our lodgings, and there was not a weapon among 
us. This was just as well, for we could not have made any 
effectual resistance when attacked, and would only have pro- 
voked the enemy to destroy us if we had fired on them. It 
was a pleasant half-hour's ride from the gate of the city to 
the well. On either side rose those mounts so famous in old- 
time story — Ebal and Gerizim, the mountains of blessing and 
cursing. On Ebal once the altar of the Lord was reared, 
and on it all the words of the law were written. No iron tool 
was to be lifted in rearing the altar, whole large stones only. 
There are enough scattered around now to build a temple. 
On Gerizim the tribes to bless were standing, on Ebal the 
tribes to curse ; and to this day Ebal is covered with rocks 
and Gerizim is tilled to its top. 

" Here at the base of Mount Gerizim is Jacob's Well, the 
scene of one of the most beautiful and instructive passages 
in the life of our Lord. Looking down the narrow valley, 
we could mark the way by which he was travelling. At the 
well he would pause while his disciples went to the city 
which we have just left. The woman of Samaria comes 
while he is sitting on the well, which was stoned up a, little 
way from the ground. And then follows that remarkable 
conversation which has come down to us through the ages 
and will be read to the end of time. 

" When we arrived we found a heap of rubbish about the 
well, which was covered with a stone. This we removed and 
found that it concealed the opening through a wooden plat- 
form, and the mouth of the well was two or three feet on one 
side of this opening. Mr. Righter and I crept under the plat- 
form and proceeded with a cord and weight to measure the 
depth of the well. Just as the weight touched the bottom 
the cry was raised that Bedouins were coming. We tied a 
knot in the string to keep the measure, — which was seventy- 
five feet, — and came out. The party were all mounted and 



THE HERO OF JACOB'S WELL. 20I 

anxious to be off, for a party of Arabs were riding toward 
us, in single file, with their long spears at rest and guns slung 
over their shoulders. The better part of valor was for us, 
unarmed and on horseback, to get away from the enemy as 
speedily as possible. Our dragoman proved indeed our 
leader in flight, for instead of keeping between us and the 
enemy and holding a parley with them if he could, he was 
off like a shot to the city, and left us to our fate. As my 
horse had been selected for his gentleness and easy gait, 
without regard to speed, the rest of the party soon left me 
behind. The savages halted, and one of their number came 
on to overtake me. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw 
him coming in full leap upon me with his spear balanced 
and ready to run it through my back. At this instant Mr. 
Righter, who had gone on ahead of me, looked around, and 
seeing the imminent danger to which I was exposed, wheeled 
about and dashed between me and the savage. The spear 
hit him in his side, went through his overcoat and under- 
clothing, made a flesh-wound just below the ribs and glanced 
off. Had he been in the position that I was in it would have 
gone directly into his body and killed him without a doubt. 
Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Thompson rode back to us, and ad- 
dressing the Arab in his own language, to his great astonish- 
ment, and calling him friend, they seemed to shake his pur- 
pose. He ordered us to stay where we were while he went 
off to his company. But we did not obey orders, and as soon 
as he was gone we went the other way with accelerated 
velocity, and did not look back till we were under the walls 
of the city. The two camp-followers fell into the hands of 
the enemy, were beaten and stripped of their scant clothing, 
which we, however, made up to them, 

" Once more in our lodgings, I examined the wound of my 
friend Righter, cleansed it thoroughly with cold water, 
dressed it with sticking-plaster, and sought to keep him quiet 
after the excitement. His cot was next to mine, and the 
night following this eventful day I often put out my hand, 
which he would take in his and press it in token of the love 
that had prompted him to offer his life for his friend. And 



202 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

greater love hath no man than this. Neither of us could 
sleep that night. If I dozed a moment, that big black 
savage, horse, spear, gun and all, would dash into the room, 
and sleep would fly from me as I did from him a few hours 
before. It was some time before my nerves resumed their 
normal condition. History has made some heroic friend- 
ships immortal. And we know that soldiers have sacrificed 
themselves for their commanders. But no story tells of 
purer and nobler self-sacrifice than this. One minute more 
and that cruel spear would have gone into my back and come 
out of my breast. He rode between it and me and received 
it in his side. That is in brief my experience with the Arabs, 
whose murderous spears and guns are now doing such fear- 
ful work with the flower of the British army in the Soudan." 

" But tell us of the fate of your party, and especially of the 
hero of Jacob's Well." 

" Certainly, if you are interested in hearing more. Dr. 
Calhoun was then a missionary in Mount Lebanon. He after- 
wards came to this country, and at my house met a hundred 
ministers and other friends ; he was dying then, and his soul 
lived with God while he was yet in the flesh. He had rela- 
tives to whom he went, and then he slept in the Lord. Mr. 
Thompson is the son of the missionary at Sidon, the distin- 
guished author of the ' Land and the Book.' The son came 
to this city, and is now a great physician and the instructor 
of that wonderful Bible-class in Association Hall. Mr. 
Groesbeck died in this city. The Rev. Mr. Hill is an honored 
pastor in New England. Not long after he returned from 
that journey he sent for me to come to New Hampshire and 
make him the happy husband of a lovely bride. I went. His 
son is now an assistant in my office, and writes in the next 
room to mine. And Righter, whom you call 'the hero of 
Jacob's Weir — Mr. Hill and he came home with me; and 
the American Bible Society prevailed on him to go back to 
the Levant in its service. The Crimean war was now raging. 
He went to the Crimea ; was kindly entertained by Lord 
Raglan, the English general in command ; visited the 
wounded, ministered to the dying, pushed his way into 



SEEKING REST AND FINDING NONE. 203 

Assyria, and at Diarbekir, on the banks of the Tigris, after 
fighting bravely with fever, in the midst of tender, loving 
Christian friends, he breathed away his noble soul. 

" The last two years of his life were filled with incident 
and adventure, and some other evening, if you like, I will 
tell you more of him and them." 

" Please let it be very soon." 



SEEKING REST AND FINDING NONE. 

This is just about what a great part of the world are do- 
ing, especially in summer time — seeking rest and finding 
none. It is but a small portion of the inhabitants of a great 
city who go from home to find rest and refreshment; and 
very few who go get what they go for. At some fashionable 
watering-places the same rounds of parties, dinners, suppers, 
kettle-drums, receptions, balls, and plays are kept up as in 
the winter in town. One would suppose that even the brain 
of fashion would enjoy a little rest. But if it seeks rest, it 
finds none. Its life is excitement, and without it the season 
is dull, horrid, intolerable. 

The number of telegraph-wires at Saratoga is largely in- 
creasing. The great hotels must provide the means of keep- 
ing their guests in constant intercourse with the stock market 
of the world. The man of business cannot rest unless he 
knows how things are, and when he knows he has no rest at 
all. He cannot go where the telegraph will not talk to him, 
and the more it talks the more uneasy he is. He went away 
seeking rest, but finds none. It is one of the wonders of the 
world how women and men stand the wear and tear of fash- 
ionable and business life. The quiet scholar with his book, 
by the sea or in the mountain shade, seems to be getting 
rest ; yet it is quite likely the man of business says, " I should 
think he would get tired of study, study, study, and would 
like to rest awhile." 



204 I REN Ai us LETTERS. 

No class of people need rest more than professional men. 
And some of them take queer measures to get it. Many- 
seek it and find it not. More than half the tourists who go 
to Europe for recreation and health come back more tired 
than when they went. It takes them six months at home to 
get over a journey in Europe. They went seeking rest, and 
found none. They made a toil of their pleasure. That was 
the mischief of it. They wanted to see and do so much in 
the few months of foreign travel, that they rushed around 
generally as if shot ahead by a catapult. 

There is no labor or study more wearying to the brain 
than " sight-seeing." It absorbs the mental faculties. The 
attention is arrested, fixed, held, and all the powers are taxed 
to retain distinct images of what is seen. It is hard work. 
Go into a gallery of pictures by great masters. You see them 
for the first time perhaps. You know it may be the last 
time. It is your pleasure to get them photographed on the 
mind, so that you may not have them all mixed up in mem- 
ory a year hence. Your head is held back as you look up. 
The neck is weary of holding the head. The floor is cold, 
and drives the blood away from the feet. You are chilled 
and stiff. But you stick to it, and do up a gallery or two and 
four or five churches in five or six hours. It was a day of 
pleasure, a red-letter day, long to be remembered. But it 
was a hard day's work. You never studied so hard or so 
much in any one day before. Hebrew is play to it. It told 
on the brain. And if you keep up that sort of study for two 
or three months, and call it relaxation from preaching or 
practising, you will be seeking rest and finding none. In 
that way delicate persons get ill in foreign travel and wonder 
why they are laid up. They tried to do too much. That is 
all. They are not able to afford the time for slow and easy 
stages, and so they drive on as though life depended on the 
swiftness of their journey. It is just the other way exactly. 
Life is likely to be lost by haste ; health is saved by taking 
things moderately. 

A minister takes a well-earned release for four months, and 
very wisely resolves to go to Europe. He has long wanted 



SEEKING REST AND FINDING NONE. 20$ 

to go. He wishes his wife to go with him. He is not that 
brute who said to his friend just going abroad, " Are you 
going for pleasure, or are you going to take your wife ?" 
No; his wife goes with him if the purse and the children 
will permit. Then he asks some kind friend, who has been 
abroad and knows the ways and means of seeing Europe, to 
mark out a line of travel for the time that he is to have on 
the other side of the sea ; the routes, the places, the principal 
things to be seen. His friend marks it out for him, giving 
some hours to the work, for it requires much thought 
and many references to adjust a journey to the time al- 
lowed. Some whole countries must be left unseen. Some 
cities with great attractions cannot be visited in the 
time. He takes the programme, and goes abroad with the 
full expectation of following it out. But he has hardly set 
foot on foreign soil before he resolves heroically to see Europe. 
" This is my only chance," he says, " and I would rather see a 
little of the whole than to make a study of only a fraction." 
And away he goes. He travels by night whenever he can. 
He sees all he can see by daylight, and then pushes on as if 
in pursuit of new worlds to conquer. His wife, poor thing, 
is so tired, she is half sorry she ever came. He thinks he 
could have seen more if he had come alone. But he gets 
overdone and wearied, and his back aches, and his head ; and 
when he gets on board the steamer to come home he has 
only a confused dream of an everlasting panorama of all sorts 
of sights — mountains and paintings and strange cities ; and 
he tries in vain to straighten them out, so as to carry to his 
people or keep for himself a vivid impression of what he has 
seen in any one country on the Continent. This is no fancy 
picture of mine. Hundreds of ministers come back from 
such a "run" without being materially benefited in mind or 
health. They are worn out, and the only real good they got 
was on the sea-voyage back and forth, when they were com- 
pelled to be quiet, if they were, or were not sea-sick. That 
did them good, quite likely ; and but for that they would have 
been seeking rest and finding none. 

To preach moderation to the average American citizen is 



206 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

about as much waste of wits or breath as one can afford to 
make. But it ought to be practised by our business men, 
and they need to be preached to on the subject more than 
any other class of men. It is not Greek roots or mathe- 
matics that run away with the brains of men and leave them 
dyjng at the top. It is the unresting race after the rainbow, 
at whose foot is buried a pot of gold. It is the battle of life. 
It is the ever-present struggle of man with man to see which 
shall come out ahead. Yet there is not a man living who 
has not the hope within him of a time when he may rest. 

Why not take it now ? Why not use the world as not 
abusing it? There is time enough to do all of life's work 
without being in a hurry; there is no need of eating the 
bread of care and being anxious for the morrow. Sufficient 
unto each day is its evil. If we do with our might what our 
hands have to do, we shall find it is all that is required of us, 
and we may rest on that assurance. 

This is no plea for idleness. That is a sin. But the 
world of whom I am speaking work too hard to be happy. 
Society, so called, is excited, and the most gay and fashion- 
able people are tired out with the pleasures they call duties, 
and many die actual martyrs to the demands made upon 
them by the circle in which they revolve. So with bankers 
and tradesmen and all men of business, they try to do too 
much ; they pile up responsibilities until the burden becomes 
too great for human endurance, and then they give out in 
their weakest spot. They wonder why they should have the 
liver-complaint from too much head-work ! 

And so it is with ministers and medical men and lawyers. 
They never learn how to live till they have finished their 
course. They find rest in their graves, but they would have 
been more useful, liv^ed longer, and had far more comfort in 
their lives, had they rested oftener and longer, while they 
were in the midst of their days. 

And now if you have had patience to read this homily, I 
will practise what I have been preaching and rest awhile. 
Under the shadow of these great trees I was thinking what a 
blessed privilege it is to be able to rest ; to stop the wheels 



NOT THE ANCIENT SAINT. 20/ 

of the subtle, mysterious machinery turned by the stream of 
thought, and so preserve it for more effective service. As 
sweet sleep each night " knits up the ravelled sleeve of care," 
so the summer vacation, the man's play-spell, ought to 
bring him recreation, and what we are so slow to seek — repose. 
It is the Sabbath of the year. Next to work, rest is the 
greatest blessing. 



NOT THE ANCIENT SAINT. 

" What's in a name ? That which we call a rose 
By any other name would smell as sweet." 

St. John, the disciple whom the Lord loved, had a pupil 
named Polycarp, whose martyrdom on a hill near Smyrna is 
one of the sublimest and most affecting scenes in early 
church history. When the pagan proconsul told him at the 
stake to abjure Christ and he should be released and restored 
to the church of Smyrna, of which he was pastor, the brave 
old man lifted his eyes to heaven and said, " Eighty and six 
years have I served him, and he hath never wronged me ; 
and how can I deny him now.?" And after he had poured 
forth as wonderful a prayer as ever fell from human lips, he 
suffered death. When I was at the foot of the hill where 
this tragedy occurred I was not permitted to ascend it lest 
the brigands, then numerous and bold, should pounce upon 
the party and carry us off to the mountains for ransom. 

Polycarp had a school of young men studying for the min- 
istry, one of whom was named Iren^eus. Father Hyacinthe 
told me the name means that he was a man of peace. It has 
the Greek Eireite or Irene in it, and that certainly means 
peace. But the name does not always teach the thing. Irene 
was a Byzantine empress, who was so far from being of a 
peaceful turn of mind that she raised the very mischief in 
the East and made wars like a man. She rode the streets of 
Constantinople in a chariot of gold, with four white steeds, 



208 IREN^US LETTERS. 

each one of them led by a proud patrician on foot ! She ex- 
perienced the fate of war and of empires, and being ban- 
ished to the Isle of Lesbos she supported herself by taking 
in spinning, and died of grief in the year of our Lord 802. 

Iren^us went on a mission from Smyrna to a Greek 
colony in France, and there became famous as a preacher 
and a writer. He wrote against heresies, but was not alto- 
gether orthodox himself, according to our notions of ortho- 
doxy. No one of the " Fathers," the early church writers- 
has left so many and so valuable works. They are prized and 
constantly cited for their information concerning the state of 
religion and religious thought in the first two centuries. His 
huge folios have been in my family for the last five genera- 
tions, and unless they get caught in a fire, will probably en- 
dure as many more. They were in my great-grandfather's 
library when the British and Tory troops under the lead of 
Colonel Thompson, afterwards Count Rumford, inventor of 
the electric Leyden jars, broke into it, and with vandalism 
disgraceful to a philosopher, tore many of the books to 
pieces ; but, happily, spared the old folios that now keep me 
company while I write. The oldest volume that I have found 
in this inheritance — I am waiting for leisure to complete the 
search — was printed at Oxford in 1587, and the author is 
John Prime. This was thirty-six years before the first col- 
lected edition of Shakespeare's works was published. But I 
am getting away from the books we were after. 

In the monastery of Einsiedeln a monk led me down 
through a trap-door into a cellar, where the literary treasures 
of the house were preserved, and showed me among them 
the works of Irenaeus, which he was fond and proud of, and 
he expressed himself pleased to meet one bearing the name 
of the saint. The missionary from Smyrna to France was 
made Bishop of Lyons, where he died about a.d. 202. A 
church was built there at a very early day and named in his 
honor. His remains were laid in it, but when I made my 
way with great difficulty into the charnel-house I found a 
heap of bones, as of an army, piled in utter confusion, more 
disordered than in the valley of Ezekiel's vision. Those of 



NOT THE ANCIENT SAINT. 2O9 

my name-father could hardly have been among them, as he 
had been put away in the same sepulchre more than sixteen 
hundred years before, and must long ago have become dust 
and ashes. 

This long story has been drawn out of a curious inci- 
dent that has just come to my knowledge, amusing me 
immensely, and it certainly will please you to read it. Near 
the city of Alexandria, not in Egypt, but in Virginia, where 
still stands the historic church in which George Washington 
was a pewholder and regular worshipper, near this city is an 
important school of the prophets under the care of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church. It is thoroughly evangelical, 
and its professors now dead have been, and the living now 
are, able and devoted teachers of the truth as it is in Christ 
Jesus, their Lord and ours. Some one has kindly sent to me 
the monthly paper published at the seminary, calling my at- 
tention to the incident which I shall clip out and send to 
you, in spite of all the kind things the writer says about the 
man who was mistaken for a saint of the same name of the 
second century. And that I may have as little as possible to 
do with it, I will end this letter here and leave him to tell 
the story in his own words, after I subscribe myself, not the 
ancient, but a very humble modern student of the ancient 
Father. 

"PATRISTIC LORE." 
(From the Seminarium.) 

" One of my neighbors, a little piqued at the remark that 
students were wont to study the daughters more than the 
Fathers of the church, set about shifting the charge from 
his own shoulders, and so setting an example for any one to 
follow who would. In a certain religious paper he saw ad- 
vertised on reasonable terms " Irenaeus Letters," and wishing 
to collect a modest library of such books as bear on the early 
days of the church he thought well to begin with this disciple 
of Polycarp. The book turned out to be more modern than 
he wanted for his immediate use, and he kindly turned it over 
to me. And so I have at my service a charming collection of 
14 



210 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

papers on many subjects of interest ; just what I want to put 
my hands on at odd times. 

"The author would hardly be called a post-apostolic writer 
in the ordinary use of the term, but he is wonderfully scrip- 
tural and at home in apostolic teaching. For more than 
forty years he has wielded the quill and shears, as well as an 
influence to be envied by even a good man. The very milk 
of human kindness distils from his pages at whatever point 
he touches human nature. The serious, the pathetic, the 
humorous and the didactic meet the wants of every frame of 
mind, grave or gay. And in every contact with his fellow- 
men a quiet smile or a friendly word or a useful hint drops 
from his pen to picture the ready wit, the warm heart, and 
the broad culture of the dear old Father. He moves about 
among the mighty men of his acquaintance with a firm and 
easy step, showing them oflf with the skilfulness and pride of 
a cicerone among his paintings and statues. He has more 
interesting experiences to detail than most men could think 
of without making themselves heroes ; and yet he never seems 
to be looking at himself through a telescope. Like the 
Alexandria Gazette, he shows the very age and body of the 
times wherever he takes his reader ; and he throws in his 
reveries and moralizing to fill up. 

" Having trodden the mill so long himself, he tells the min- 
ister to-be just what is before him when he assumes the cares 
of a parish and a hearthstone. He gives counsel on the all- 
important matters of choosing a help-meet, and rearing the 
hostages to Fortune, so far.as these things are to be learned 
by good advice. Many points in social reform are suggested, 
and the world would be better for listening to Irenaeus. But the 
good man's aim has been to edify all his readers, to entertain, to 
comfort, to instruct. His happy style is well worth imitat- 
ing, if it could only be equalled. The directness with which 
he goes to his subject, the vigorous hold he takes, and the 
quiet satisfaction with which he disposes of the whole and 
wipes his pen are admirable — I had well-nigh said prime. 
On the whole, I have much enjoyed the mistake of my neigh- 
bor, and when I am done smiling over this one, I hope he 



A YOUNG MAN VOID OF UNDERSTANDING. 211 

may make another raid on the Fathers. And if it suits him 
quite as well, I suggest that he complete his collection of 
Irenaeus the Last for the delectation of the Friends." 



A YOUNG MAN VOID OF UNDERSTANDING. 

The late Rev. Dr. Bedell, father of Bishop Bedell of Ohio, 
was a very excellent Episcopal preacher in the city of Phila- 
delphia. He was full of love for Christ and the souls of men, 
and under his preaching many were turned to righteousness 
who are now stars in his crown of rejoicing. As the crowd 
in his church one evening were waiting for the sermon, and 
the glowing-hearted minister stood in the holy place ready 
to begin, a young stranger entered the door of the church 
just in time to catch the words of the text. He was a wild, 
thoughtless, wicked youth, who had been invited to go and 
hear Dr. Bedell. But he had refused, with the profane re- 
mark that he would not go to church to hear Jesus Christ 
himself. This evening he was walking by the church, and an 
impulse, sudden and irresistible, urged him in. As he stood 
inside of the door, Dr. Bedell announced as his text, " I dis- 
cerned among the youths a young man void of under- 
standing." 

The text was a sermon. It was the word of God, sharper 
than a two-edged sword. It discerned the thoughts and in- 
tents of his heart. The Spirit of God sent it home to his con- 
science. He had been an unbeliever and despiser of the 
gospel ; but the eyes of his mind were opened. He had been 
a profligate : his sins were set in order before him. He was 
struck through as with a dart, when the folly and madness 
of his past life were revealed in the light of the gospel. The 
faithful preacher unfolded the exceeding foolishness of a life 
of sensual pleasure, idleness, frivolity, and the inevitable end 
of such a career. It is recorded of this young man that he 
became a regular attendant on the ministry of Dr. Bedell, a 
member of his church, and a useful Christian. 



212 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

"What a fool!" I have had to say one, twice, and again 
within the last few weeks ; and many times in the last few 
months, when bloody murder, death-sentences, disgrace, 
State's prison, broken hearts, gray hairs with sorrow at the 
grave, a wide circle of relatives and friends hiding their faces 
in grief and shame— all these, with anguish unutterable, have 
been caused by the acts of "a young man void of under- 
standing." 

What a fool ! Had he no brains, no sense, no understand- 
ing — not to speak of principle, conscience, fear of God, sense 
of right, truth, honor, love of parents, sisters, and friends ? 
Had he no reason, judgment, pride, ambition, that he should 
throw them all away, and leap madly into the abyss of sin 
and woe ? 

What a fool ! He went to a theatre, and was smitten with 
the wanton airs of a woman with no more brains than he 
had himself, and the end thereof was death. If he had used 
the common senses of a human being, he would have known 
and felt that to go after such a person was to fling away all 
hope of success in life, to alienate the friends who would 
otherwise be his helpers, to doom himself to toil, and suffer- 
ing, and hardship, and certain ruin. But he was void of 
understanding. In the madness and folly of youth he gave 
up all and followed her. The race was short and swift, and 
the end came in wretchedness and :hame. 

What a fool ! He was the son of a proud house and the 
heir of a great name. He might have been himself distin- 
guished and honored. But he was covetous and wicked. He 
had not sense enough to be satisfied with the fruits of in- 
dustry and the reward of honest labor. No moral principle 
restrained him. He grew up without the fear of God before 
his eyes. He thought that secret crime would yield him 
wealth more rapidly than painstaking service, which never 
fails of its fit returns. The life of a kinsman was between 
him and a sum of money, and he became a murderer. He is 
now lying in the prison-cell under sentence of death. 

He was a clerk ; had access to money not his own ; handled 
it often and became familiar with it. He saw that using 



A YOUNG MAN VOID OF UNDERSTANDING. 21 3 

money increased it, and it grew while the owner slept. 
Gradually he began to think he might gain something for 
himself by taking another's money without his consent. He 
would borrow it, and put it all back before it was wanted. 
He helped himself, and ruined himself. It did not turn out 
as well as he hoped : he took a little more to make one last 
effort to recover. Bad went to worse. His feet were swept 
from under him, and away he went. The inevitable day of 
discovery came. He fled to parts unknown. But on the 
face of this broad earth there is no spot where a thief may 
dwell and be happy. Money will not make up for the loss of 
a good name, the respect of men, the peace of conscience. 
What a fool ! 

How many times in the Bible sin is called folly and the 
sinner a fool ! It is said that any man would rather be 
thought a knave than a fool. But the knave is a fool. 
There is no bigger fool in this world of sinners than the 
young man, with a fair chance before him of earning his 
daily bread, and with it respectability if not riches, who yet 
spoils it all by doing wrong. It may be only a little thing. 
He would shrink as from the flames or floods from the 
thought of robbery or murder. But he flatters his conscience 
that he will put it all back, and no one will know it. Fool 
that he is ! There are two that know it before it is done. He 
knows it himself, and is a thief before he actually takes the 
money that is not his ; and God knows it instantly when the 
thought of his heart conceives the sin. Then the deed is 
written all over earth, and sea, and sky; he reads it in the 
clouds, hears it in the wind, and feels it in every breath he 
draws. Oh what a fool he was ! 

When I see a long line of young men waiting their turn to 
get into a theatre where filthy plays and lewd women and 
lascivious sights and sounds will set on fire their passions, 
tempt them to sensual indulgence that will drain their purse 
and cause them to steal, I think of Dr. Bedell's text, and see 
a long line of young men void of understanding. There is a 
whole string of fools. Every one of them might be happy in 
the pursuit of knowledge and innocent amusement in the 



214 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

paths of purity, pleasantness, and peace. But they are all in 
the steps that lead to death. 

Gilded saloons, where men drown their souls in perdition, 
are the resort of thousands of young men void of under- 
standing. Fools all. If they had brains, the greatest of 
poets said that drink would " steal them away." I sought to 
verify that quotation, and found three in the same play so 
pat to my purpose that I cite them all : 

" Reputation, reputation, reputation ! Oh, I have lost my 
reputation ! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what 
remains is bestial." 

" O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to 
be known by, let us call thee devil !" 

" Oh that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal 
away their brains !" 

These are the words of the great bard of nature ; they are 
in the line of this letter to fools; for there is no folly so 
foolish as that which throws away reputation, happiness, and 
eternal life. What shall it profit.'' The immortal soul, with 
its infinite possibilities in the world to come, destroyed for 
the sake of an evening's frolic, the money of another, the 
guilty indulgence of an hour ! Some secret spirit, perhaps 
the Spirit of all truth and love, from whom proceedeth every 
good thought and purpose, said to me an hour ago, " Run, 
speak to that young man." " Write to those young men void 
of understanding. The city swarms with them. They are 
everywhere. Mothers may put your words into the hands of 
their sons. God will send them where they will reach young, 
fresh, tender hearts." Oh that they were wise, that they were 
men of understanding, that they would say unto Wisdom, 
" Be thou the guide of my youth" ! 



THE AMBER WITCH. 21$ 

THE AMBER WITCH. 

SHOWING HOW THE CRITICS WERE CAUGHT. 

About forty years ago was published in German, and 
afterwards in an English translation by Lady Duf? Gordon, 
an extraordinary tale of witchcraft. Its title was " Mary 
Schweilder, the Amber Witch, the most interesting trial for 
witchcraft ever known : printed from an imperfect manu- 
script by her father, Abraham Schweilder, the pastor of 
Coserow, in the island of Usedom : edited by W. Meinholdt, 
doctor of theology and pastor." 

In the preface the editor gave the history of the manu- 
script which he lays before the public, saying that he was 
formerly pastor in Coserow, and in the choir of his church 
there was a niche in which he had often noticed a heap of 
loose papers. One day he was wanting a bit of paper, and 
his old sexton pulled out some from the niche. The pastor 
saw that it was vellum and part of a volume, which the sex- 
ton said had been lying there from time immemorial. The 
pastor carried the volume home with him, and found that 
the beginning and end of it, and leaves from the midst of it 
were wanting. This was a sore trial to the worthy pastor, 
who had great antiquarian tastes, and he mourned sorely 
that any part of this treasure was lost. He became deeply 
interested in the study of it, finding that it was the report of 
the trial of a young lady for witchcraft, written by the for- 
mer pastor, Schweilder. 

At first he thought of writing a new story and weaving in 
the disjointed fragments of the manuscript, but he finally 
concluded to leave it as he found it, merely restoring those 
leaves which had been torn out of the middle, imitating as 
accurately as he was able the language and manner of the 
old biographer. But he said, " I refrain from pointing out 
the particular passages which I have supplied, so as not to 
disturb the historical interest of the greater part of my read- 



2l6 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

ers. For modern criticism, which has now attained to a de- 
gree of acuteness never before equalled, such a confession 
would be entirely superfluous, as critics will easily distinguish 
the passages which have been written by Pastor Schweilder 
from the parts written by Pastor Meinholdt." 

The words that I have put in italics in the last sentence 
furnish the key to the curious lock which the pastor in- 
vented, with a very good motive, indeed ; but whether or 
not he was wholly justified in his invention I will leave the 
critics to judge. For, at that time literary criticism, espe- 
cially biblical criticism, was very smart, and exceedingly self- 
confident. I would not venture to say that it is more modest 
and less arrogant now. During the forty years that have 
elapsed since the Amber Witch appeared, the critics of lit- 
erature, sacred and profane, have become more acute, de- 
structive, and intolerant. And it will not be in vain that we 
revive the origin and the history of this tale of witchcraft. 

The story itself is of absorbing interest, a tale of real 
power, showing immense learning, great dramatic ability, 
with such details of fanaticism, cruelty, and crime as make 
one ashamed to believe that human nature and real life 
could ever have made such things actual. But the authen- 
tic records of this awful delusion are so full of facts that 
no fictitious works can exceed them in horror. And when 
the writer of romance has spent his strength in describing 
the fearful blindness of men and women in this delusion, he 
has not made it worse than the history of times in New Eng- 
land and Old England two centuries ago. 

Pastor Meinholdt writes the story of Mary Schweilder, her 
trial for witchcraft, pretending that he had found it in the 
choir of his old church, as written two hundred years before, 
and that he had supplied the parts that had been lost. Im- 
mediately on its appearance in print it commanded public 
attention. Its merit as a story would have made it popular. 
Its style, a successful imitation of the antique, was exceed- 
ingly entertaining, and the learning revealed in the text and 
the notes showed plainly that it was the work of a scholar. 
Apart altogether from the chief purpose of the author, the 



THE AMBER WITCH. 21/ 

book in itself had profound interest as a tale of witchcraft, 
which is as sad a chapter as is written in the annals of the 
human race. Mothers accusing their own daughters of hav- 
ing bewitched them, and seeing them put to death in their 
innocence and beauty, are a psychological study ; scarcely 
credible, but well attested by abundant testimony. 

The critics of the day received the " Amber Witch " as a 
veritable history, and in the pride of their skill proceeded to 
point out the parts of it that had been written by the finder 
and editor of the manuscript, though he had left them none but 
internal evidence of his handiwork by which to distinguish 
it from the original memoirs by the ancient pastor. It was a 
fine chance for the critics to air their learning. They went 
at it with alacrity, and had as much delight in their criticism 
as one who taketh great spoil. When their criticisms were 
assailed by counter-criticism, and their conclusions contemp- 
tuously scouted, they returned to the charge, and demon- 
strated to their own satisfaction that such and such passages 
could not have been written by the author of other passages 
to which they also referred. They ridiculed the claims to 
scholarship of those who would pretend that the whole was 
the work of one and the same hand. They wrapped them- 
selves in the thickest of all mantles — self-conceit — and proud 
of their own superior learning, they looked down with pity 
on the ignorance of their brethren. When they had com- 
mitted themselves beyond all recovery to the antiquity and 
the mosaic work of the narrative, and by controversy had 
gone so deep into the mire that to extricate themselves was 
impossible, the author came forward with his account of the 
origin, intent, and effect of the story of the Amber Witch. 
It was a child of his own, and his only. He had been laying 
a snare for the critics, and he had caught them. Being a 
firm believer in the integrity of the Holy Scriptures, he had 
been disgusted with much of the biblical criticism of Ger- 
many ; he was indignant at the superciliousness of men who 
would take up the gospels and tell you that this or that chap- 
ter had been interpolated ; its style was so different from the 
other parts of the same gospel ; words are used in that chapter 



2l8 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

that are not used in any other, and therefore the whole could 
not have been written by one and the same person. This 
style of criticism had so vexed the righteous soul of the 
author that he invented this plan of bringing these critics to 
grief. Their feelings are not to be described when they 
found themselves thus entrapped. It was easy to say that 
it was a mean trick, but that did not help them out of the 
scrape. They were the victims of their own excessive van- 
ity. Had they let the book alone, all would have been well ; 
but they had not wit enough for that. If they could cut up 
the Bible and refer its parts to other authors than those 
whose names are on the title-pages of their several books, 
they certainly might take in hand a volume on witchcraft 
that did not claim to be more than two hundred years old. 
Forty years have gone by since the critics were exposed in 
this precious bit of blundering, but they are not less sure of 
their canons of criticism now than they were then. 

Two hundred years ago, save one, Grotius was born. He 
became a statesman and theologian, and so much wiser than 
Solomon that he said Solomon did not write the Book of 
Ecclesiastes, though Solomon said he did. By and by other 
critics claimed that there are words and forms of expression 
in it that were unknown to the Hebrew language in tlie days 
of Solomon. Other critics of equal learning deny this state- 
ment. Dr. Pusey hglds that "not one word has been found 
in Ecclesiastes to mark a later age than Solomon's ;" and Dr. 
Tayler Lewis, one of the ablest American scholars, my friend 
from youth, and Dr. Schaff, and many others whom I might 
name, have no doubt of the fact that Solomon wrote it. But 
the beauty of it is that the critics, who are just as sure he 
did not as the Amber Witch critics were that the story was 
ancient, differ among themselves one thousand years as to 
the time when it was written. One of them claims that it 
was written eight years before the birth of Christ, and others 
fix the date at 204, 333, 400, 450, 538, 699. and 975 B.C.— all 
these and several other dates having zealous and learned 
champions. 

When I read in the current religious literature the flippant 



THE SHAMS OF SOCIETY. 219 

remarks of biblical critics that this, that, or another portion 
of the sacred Scriptures was not written by the author to 
whom it is ascribed, I am reminded of the great amusement 
we enjoyed forty years ago in hearing of the sorrows of the 
critics of the Amber Witch. 



THE SHAMS OF SOCIETY. 

" This world is all a fleeting show 
For man's illusion given." 

If I had any doubt on that subject, it was rudely dispelled 
by the receipt this evening by mail of a circular letter. Of 
the shams and humbug, the hollow deceit and shabby tricks 
by which people try to pass for what they are not, I have 
seen as much as others ; but my education and intercourse 
with the world had not been so far extended as to bring me 
into acquaintance with a custom which " has long been prac- 
tised in the large cities of Europe," and is now to be intro- 
duced among the upper classes of the city of New York. 

If a man has money and nothing else, it is highly becom- 
ing and meritorious to use it in the entertainment of his 
friends. The Bible saith that " money answereth all things." 
It makes up for the want of brains and culture, and helps 
him who has it to be useful and agreeable. A rich and 
hospitable gentleman will, with virtue, command the respect 
of his fellow-men, though his early education may have been 
neglected, and it is evident he was not "to the manner born." 
And it is now proposed to enable the stupidest of men and 
women to show that if " wisdom is a defence, and money is a 
defence," as the Bible saith, so money can buy wit, and the 
one who has the most of " filthy lucre" can have the most 
charming parties, with the most entertaining guests, and the 
wit and song and even the conversation shall be made by 
machine, at ten dollars a head. But I am detaining you 
from the circular : 



220 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

[COPY.] 

" New York, May, 1882. 

" Families, who are about giving receptions, dinner-parties, or other en- 
tertainments, will be gratified to know that persons who will assist in making 
these events pleasant and enjoyable can be obtained through the medium 

of The Bureau. These persons will not be professionals, but parties of 

culture and refinement, who will appear well, dress elegantly, and mingle 
with the guests, while able and willing to play, sing, converse fluently, tell a 
good story, give a recitation or anything that will help to make an evening 
pass quickly and pleasantly. 

" The Bureau does not claim any originality in this plan, but simply 

complies with the increasing demands of a large class of its patrons, in thus 
introducing a feature of the business that has long been practised in the 
large cities of Europe. The attendance of such persons, young or old, male 
or female, can be had for the sum of ten dollars per evening each. We 
will guarantee them to be strictly honest and desirable persons. 

" Respectfully yours." 

I must confess to a slight sense of wounded pride on receiv- 
ing this proposal, having never felt the need of such hired 
help at the dinner-table or evening sociable. The circular is 
certainly intended only for the rich and stupid. I am not 
rich, and it humiliates me to know that this Bureau thinks 
me stupid, and sends this intimation that for ten dollars 
they will send a man to dine with me who can tell a good 
story. 

I had read in the Bible and other Oriental writings of the 
practice of hiring mourners at funerals, whose weeping and 
wailing are in proportion to the price paid for their cries and 
tears ; but it had never reached me before that, in any market 
or country, professional wits were to be let, who are intro- 
duced to the company as friends of the host, and are to be 
amusing at so much an hour. It is the misfortune of some 
men who are gifted with the faculty of telling entertaining 
stories to be " invited out" for the sake of their powers, and 
the host would be grievously disappointed if the wit did not 
pay for his dinner by doing his level best. Mr. Clark, of the 
Knickerbocker Magazine, was one of these amusing gentlemen 
greatly in demand. At a fashionable party, he was behaving 
himself with the quiet demeanor of a gentleman, when he 



THE SHAMS OF SOCIETY. 221 

was suddenly confounded by the approach of a servant, who 
said, " Mrs. Stuckup's compliments to Mr. Clark, and won't 
he please to begin to be funny." Now, FalstafT was right 
when he said, " If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I 
would give no man a reason upon compulsion." And no wit 
can be summoned to order. 

And what man can with malice prepense or with forced 
amiability produce entertainment at so much a yard ? There 
was a time — for aught I know it may be so now — when kings 
had professional jesters, clowns, fools, dwarfs, and oddities of 
all sorts to amuse them and their guests, which is certainly a 
better dish to set before a king or for a king to set before his 
trenchermen than the fights of beasts and men which made 
a Roman holiday. When British ladies and gentlemen were 
seen dancing, the native Chinese gentry expressed surprise 
that they should put themselves to so much physical incon- 
venience for pleasure, and said, " We have our servants to 
dance for us." 

The daughter of Herodias danced before Herod and pleased 
him, and the murder of John the Baptist followed, his venera- 
ble head being the price which the sensual regent paid for 
the evening's entertainment. But a dancing-girl before a 
prince, or a chorus of men-singers and women-singers such 
as the king in Jerusalem got for his amusement, was some- 
thing quite other than this proposition made to me by letter 
seems to intimate. Imagine for a moment my acceding to 
the oflfer and availing myself of the opportunity to engage 
for the very moderate sum of fifty dollars five professional 
amusers — "parties of culture and refinement," "elegantly 
dressed " — who come to my house, comfortably filled with 
the sort of people who are apt to be here at an evening com- 
pany. These ten-dollar amusers are to " play," " sing," " con- 
verse fluently," "tell a good story," " give a recitation," " or 
anything that will help to make an evening pass quickly and 
pleasantly." They are not to be known as hired performers,- 
but are to be introduced as friends of mine, under such name 
as they choose to assume for the occasion. 

How much "culture" or "refinement" could I have to 



222 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

play such a trick on my friends, and how much could these 
actors have who would go about town to perform in the dis- 
guise of gentlemen and ladies! It is becoming and it is not 
unusual to invite the services of singers and players on in- 
struments to add to the pleasures of an evening, and it is 
perfectly proper to pay them ; but that is quite another thing 
from passing off a stranger as a friend whose acquaintance 
your guests are supposed to be making, while he is only earn- 
ing his wages by singing a song or telling a story. 

The letter I have received very kindly offers to guarantee 
the honesty of these amusement-makers. That is something. 
They might slip the spoons into their pockets, or make a 
mistake in getting off with an overcoat. So we are given the 
assurance that they will not steal ; and so far, so good. That 
is the only thing about the business that does not savor of 
sham, shoddy, and snobbery. 

But it is a part and parcel of modern " society," and is a 
natural outgrowth of those conditions that prevail where the 
possession of wealth is a passport to association with what is 
called the best circles. Caterers will furnish guests as well as 
supper, and the man who has struck oil has smoothed his way 
into palaces that were hitherto inaccessible. Once in, and 
the caterer will do for him what is needed to make his recep- 
tions brilliant and agreeable. The wit of the ages may be 
committed to memory. The pleasantest stories that ever 
were made shall be ready at his word, for he has only to give 
the order and the bureau will produce a trained band of per- 
formers who will astonish the natives, and make them say, 
" What a splendid set of friends our neighbor draws about 
him !" 

It is all sham and pretence. Good sense condemns it as 
weak and foolish. Religion rejects it as part of that great 
system of hypocrisy and lies by which poor human nature is 
always trying to appear to be something it is not. The lack of 
early culture will never be supplied by artificial helps in after 
years. Manners are of great value, but conventional manners, 
the mere forms which society has adopted by general consent, 
are of very little account, where kindness, virtue, and com- 



GREAT PREACHING IN SMALL PLACES. 22 1 

mon-sense rule the life and conversation. The apostle taught 
courtesy as a virtue. Children should learn it from the ex- 
ample and precepts of their parents. To be agreeable to 
others is a duty, and it certainly is a pleasure. And the 
family endowed with the ordinary gifts of education and 
sense will be at no loss to make their friends enjoy their 
hospitalities, without putting themselves to the trouble of 
calling in the hirelings of the bureau, elegantly dressed, able 
to tell a good story, and warranted not to steal. 



GREAT PREACHING IN SMALL PLACES. 

Since I wrote you from Lake George my travels have been 
continued. No matter where I spent the Sabbath. You are 
bound to have a share of all that happens in these summer 
pilgrimages. 

It was after the morning service — when and where I will 
be excused from saying — that I was sitting at the shady and 
breezy end of the hotel piazza, seeking cool refreshment 
after a pulpit exercise in a very hot day. A gentleman whom 
I had never met before came up and expressed the pleasure 
he enjoyed in hearing me in the pulpit for the first time. 
And then he went on to say that every minister who comes 
here to this summer resort thinks he must preach a great 
sermon ; he brings out a big gun and fires it off with a tre- 
mendous roar, as if he expected to astonish the natives, and 
us too, who are not natives, but have come here for repose 
and refreshment. " What pleased me," he said, " in your 
preaching was, that you did not give us anything of that 
sort, but just a simple gospel sermon that everybody could 
understand, and that ought to do us all good." 

" Thank you," I answered ; but inasmuch as I had preached 
as much of a sermon as I ever did or could, one on which I 
had spent more time and labor than I ever expect to bestow 
on another, I was rather taken down by the man's thinking 



224 IREN^US LETTERS. 

it only a simple little thing that was about right for the chil- 
dren. Yet it may be that the perfection of preaching is 
where all the art has been employed in concealing art, and 
the simplicity of the gospel has been the result. The preacher 
has been wholly lost sight of in the exhibition of the truth 
as it is in Christ, and the hearer thinks the man is no great 
man, but what he says is just what the hungry soul most 
craves. 

So when Dr. A. Alexander, the divine of Princeton, went 
out to a little country meeting-house and held forth the word 
of life with that simplicity which his wonderful spiritual ex- 
perience and insight were wont to reveal in his sermons, an 
old lady being asked how she liked the stranger, said, " Very 
well, but I guess he is not a very learned man." His was 
learning that passeth knowledge. 

Norman McLeod was a Scotch preacher of splendid pulpit 
power. He came over to this country a few years ago, not 
long before his death, to visit the lost sheep of the Church 
of Scotland in the wilds of Canada. He found a little Scotch 
settlement, a dozen miles away from the railroad; spent a 
Sabbath, and gave them two or three of his sermons that in 
the old country had stirred the souls of the wisest and might- 
iest of that land where all are born theologians and spend 
much of their lives in what Milton proposed to do when he 
sat down to write " Paradise Lost." Monday morning one of 
these farmers was bringing the Doctor to the railroad, and 
said to him, " You see we are a feeble folk ; we want a 
meenister most of all ; we can't have a big man ; but if we 
had a plain sort of man, who can give us just such little ser- 
mons as yours, it would suit us very well." 

Alas for the Queen's preacher, who at home wore a gold 
chain about his neck in the pulpit as a badge of his prefer- 
ment, and was thought the greatest preacher of his day; but 
all this went for nothing before the self-taught farmers in the 
backwoods of North America. He concealed his greatness 
that he might the more readily minister to the men of one 
book. 

Some simple peasant people affect to be pleased with learn- 



GREAT PREACHING IN SMAIL PLACES. 22$ 

ing and philosophy and whatever they cannot understand, 
as the farmer who complained to his new minister that he 
never used any Latin in his sermons, as the former pastor 
did. 

" But I did not suppose you would understand Latin if I 
used it in preaching." 

"Well, we wouldn't, but we pays for the best and we've a 
right to the best." 

The Rev. Dr. Binningwas a profound metaphysical preach- 
er, who delighted to descant to his unlettered people upon the 
unconditioned and the subjective, to their utter bewilderment 
and unedification. After he had exchanged pulpits with the 
neighboring pastor of a very different style, one who thought 
the first duty of the minister is to make the truth intelligible, 
he returned, and meeting the sexton near the church and 
parsonage, asked him familiarly : 

"And how did you like your preacher last Sunday ?" 

To which the candid doorkeeper replied : 

" It was a great deal too plain and simple for me; I likes 
sermons that jumble the judgment and confound the sense, 
and I never heard anybody that could come up to yourself at 
that ! !" 

There is often a sad want of tact in the selection of sub- 
jects and sermons for a summer-resort congregation. It is 
sure to be a mixed crowd, and so is any congregation unless 
it is in State's prison, where I have preached to more than a 
thousand men, all of whom had been convicted of sin by 
the courts, if not by their own consciences. And the only 
place in which a congregation ever responded to my words 
with sobs and cries and tears was a female prison. As I was 
speaking from the words, " Blessed are the pure in heart," 
the profligate, abandoned women were so moved by the con- 
trast when, without any allusion to them, I described the 
beauty and blessedness of purity, they broke out into hys- 
terical and general weeping and wailing. 

But at a watering-place the church or the hotel parlor must 
contain a very mixed multitude, and he is a wise preacher 
who knows how to speak to them rightly. They are of many 

IS 



226 IRE A^^ US LETTERS. 

shades of religious belief. I was pleased to see the distin- 
guished Unitarian preacher of New York, Dr. CoUyer, in a 
very modest Presbyterian church at Lake George listening 
attentively to the word. It would be unwise for a preacher 
to obtrude truths that might naturally grate upon the honest 
convictions of Christians of other folds than his own. I 
heard a minister in such a place deliver a sermon that he 
had evidently prepared for the instruction of an ecclesias- 
tical assembly, or for an ordination service. He thought it 
his "greatest effort," and doubtless took it to the Springs 
for the benefit of his reputation. If a preacher has a pet 
sermon, he presents it at the summer resort, moved thereto 
by two motives : first, because he thinks it will be most use- 
ful, and, secondly, it is the best he has to preach. Those are 
good reasons. Every man ought to do his best when he 
does anything. And in preaching the everlasting gospel 
there is no place for half-baked, shilly-shally performances. 
Let every man do with his might what he undertakes to do, 
and he will be judged for anything short of it. And to this 
all that I have been saying tends. The man who makes a 
splurge or seeks to astonish a people with his learning, the 
depth of his reasoning powers, and the amazing range of his 
reading; who upsets all the infidelity and turns to flight the 
armies of modern scientists in half an hour's discourse of a 
summer morning, has probably failed to serve the Master or 
to win a soul. On the other hand, if he comes to a congre- 
gation of saints and sinners, leaving for an hour the world 
to commune with God and things divine, and preaches to 
them the blessed gospel of pardon and life eternal, the greater 
the power, the loftier the eloquence, the more earnest, per- 
suasive, captivating, and charming his sermon, the more 
grateful to the Master is the service, and the more likely 
that he will lead them who hear him to seek the kingdom. 



P REACH hXG OTHER MEN'S SERMOA^S. 22y 



PREACHING OTHER MEN'S SERMONS. 

Recently in writing one of these letters I used an expres- 
sion which struclc me so forcibly that I wondered it had never 
occurred to me before. Yet I did not altogether like it. It 
was out of place as it seemed to me, and did not look at 
home. When it was in type and I read the proof I struck it 
out. The same evening I took up a foreign magazine, and 
while reading an article which I had merely glanced at before, 
this identical thought which I had used and rejected was 
there word for word. I had unconsciously retained it and 
reproduced it, and if it had pleased me, would have let it stand, 
and so incurred the charge of stealing another person's strik- 
ing thought and passing it off as my own. 

This explains many of the cases in which public speakers 
are charged with taking the thoughts and words of others. 
D'Israeli's case is familiar. An orator reads the splendid 
oration of another, and the most brilliant passage in it be- 
comes part of his own thought. He forgets entirely that he 
has read or heard it : perhaps forgets for a time the passage 
itself, but in the fervid heat of a great effort of his own, the 
eloquent words rush on his mind, and he pours them forth 
without knowing that they are not his own. We frequently 
see in the newspapers charges of dishonesty in this matter 
brought against preachers, who are utterly innocent of any 
wrong intent. 

A public sentiment obtains in England widely differing 
from that in our own country in regard to the use of other 
men's sermons. The practice is there far more common than 
is even imagined here. Not all the preachers are as candid 
as was Augustus Hare, one of the best of preachers and love- 
liest of men. He would not try to prepare more than one 
sermon in a week, and when he preached twice on Sunday, 
he would take into his pulpit a printed discourse and say to 
the people, " This is not my sermon." There are in England 



228 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

regular dealers in printed sermons. One of these is quoted 
by Mr. Davies in his very interesting volume on Successful 
Preachers as saying : 

"People generally like to read the theological literature 
outside their own church : so that a High Churchman orders 
a complete set of Spurgeon's sermons or Jay's, and a Non- 
conformist inquires for Canon Liddon." 

" The Rev. Charles Bradley's sermons were published when 
he was comparatively a young man, and as he (on retiring 
from active life many years before his death) naturally at- 
tended churches where other people preached, he often heard 
his own sermons. On one occasion the preacher, on catch- 
ing his eye as he was closing one of Mr. Bradley's discourses, 
had the presence of mind to say, " I have the more pleasure 
in having read you this excellent sermon of Mr. Bradley, as 
I see him an attentive listener.' " 

The Rev. Edward Blencowe was a great preacher, a moder- 
ate High Churchman ; he died young, but his printed sermons 
lived and were preached abundantly, so that it may truly be 
said of him, though dead, he yet speaketh. Rev. T. Mozley 
said of Mr. Blencowe's discourses, " For all I know, these 
sermons have been preached from more pulpits than any 
other sermons of this country, and they certainly bear much 
preaching." His widow published a volume of his ofif-hand 
discourses, written without a thought of their being printed, 
and they went off so rapidly that a second and then a third 
volume followed. Yet the widow was not wide-awake enough 
to discover, what afterward appeared, that her dear departed 
had taken one of the sermons in the first volume word for 
word from a volume of sermons by Mr. E. Cooper, printed 
forty years before ; at least one more was taken from the same 
source, and how many more who can telj } Mr. Davies says 
the statute of limitations allowed him to take this liberty, 
but I think with him that such a volume ought to have one 
sermon on the text, from the Book of Kings, " Alas, Master, 
for it was borrowed." 

The rector of a parish had a 7ie^v curate who boldly 
preached a sermon on the lessons of the day, taking one of 



PRE ACHING OTHER MEN'S SERMONS. 229 

Blencowe's. In the vestr\% after service, the new curate said 
to the rector, " How does my voice suit this church ?" 

"Oh, nothing is the matter with your voice," replied the 
rector, "but don't spend your money on Blencowe's three 
volumes, as my last two curates were very fond of them, and 
I do not dislike them altogether myself." 

Mr. Robert Suckling of Bassage was a good sermon-writer, 
but his biographer says that he generally burned his original 
compositions, from the humble opinion he had of his own 
powers, and when a volume of sermons appeared after his 
death, four were found to be in a great measure derived from 
printed sources. 

There is nothing new under the sun, and the good reason 
why a copyright law should not give the author perpetual 
control of his book is that every book is more or less, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, derived from or aided by books 
that have appeared before. Original thought is so very 
rare that men may well be cautious in laying claim to 
it : they may be debtors to the ancients and the moderns, 
without knowing it. In preparing an oration or a sermon, a 
thoughtful man will " read up," enriching his own mind with 
the best thoughts of the age and of past ages on the theme, 
and this is called studying, and is commended to young men 
preparing themselves to instruct others. Clothing the 
thoughts thus derived in their own words, and embellishing 
them with the work of their own imagination, they bring out 
things new and old, perhaps a better result than the models 
they consulted, and on which they formed their style. The 
Rev. Dr. once said to me : 

" I don't like to read Dr. Chalmers's sermons : I get in the 
way of preaching like him." Alas, his people would have 
been glad to see such an effect on their pastor's preaching. 
Many speakers remember what orator it was whose oral or 
written eloquence inflamed their youthful minds, and gave 
form and tone to their life-work. But imitation never be- 
comes greatness. It is wise and well to assimilate all that is 
good in everybody else, and so stand on the heights where 
others have carried us. Yet there is a way of his own that 



230 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

every one should have, a trade-mark, an individuality that 
stamps him as a man, and not a conglomeration of the beau- 
ties and deformities of half a dozen other men. 

In this country there is an established understanding 
between preacher and people that the pulpit shall furnish the 
best it can of its own for the instruction of the people. They 
do not expect nor require of a man what he hath not. They 
greatly prefer the warm, earnest utterances of a preacher's 
own soul to the cold and stately periods read to them out of 
a book. 

Dr. Grifhn of Newark, Boston, Andover, and Williams Col- 
lege, has been called the Prince of American Preachers. I 
heard him once a month for three years. His sermons, with 
his delivery, were examples of fervid eloquence which I have 
never yet heard surpassed. While I was a pastor, a volume 
of his sermons was published, and I resolved at once to give 
my people the glorious privilege of hearing them. On Sun- 
day I told them what a magnificent preacher my old presi- 
dent was, and with what rapture I heard him when I was a 
boy. Now, if they would come together on Wednesday even- 
ings, instead of my feeble talks, they should have one after 
another of these discourses becoming the tongue of an angel. 
They came and I read. And nothing ever fell so flat on that 
congregation. I wrought tempestuously through one sermon. 
Saul's armor was a tight fit on David compared to Dr. Grif- 
fin's sermon in my hands. The experiment was not repeated. 



GETTING GOOD PREACHING WITHOUT PAYING 
ANYTHING FOR IT. 

It is quite likely that the number of men who have no 
home and live by going from door to door through the coun- 
try begging bread is large enough to form a town of no mean 
size. It would, however, be a very mean town. For there is 
scarcely a meaner set of men than they who are too lazy to 
work and not ashamed to beg. 



GOOD PREACHING WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT. 23 1 

There are in this city and in every large city a number of 
people who go from church to church on the Sabbath to get 
the " means of grace," or rather to hear a sermon. And this 
number of wanderers is so large that if they were gathered 
into one congregation it would be the largest and meanest 
in the city. 

The street beggar is called a tramp. We would not harsh- 
ly apply the name to one who hungers for the bread of life 
and, having no pew of his own, asks the privilege of a seat 
in the church. Strangers are alw^ays welcome. Church hos- 
pitality is a lovely grace, and in this country is large and 
generous. But that grace ought not to be demanded by peo- 
ple who are able to help in sustaining the institutions of 
religion. Through thoughtlessness of duty or by intention- 
ally shirking it, they contrive to get good seats every Sun- 
day in any church they choose to inflict themselves upon. 
Hundreds of young married people thus wander about, to 
the annoyance of regular worshippers and not to the im- 
provement of their own self-respect. One young man in 
this city has made a list of six of the best preachers, or those 
whom he regards as the best, and he hears them in turn. 
He claims to have six pastors. But he has none at all. He 
is a church tramp. 

In a Methodist class-meeting a loud brother said, " I've 
been a church member ten years, and, bless the Lord, it's 
never cost me a cent." And the leader of the meeting re- 
sponded, " The Lord have mercy on your stingy soul." 

It is a very common practice for a club or company of 
young men to take a pew together. This is honorable and 
praiseworthy. Young women do the same. Small families 
thus unite in public worship. There is not a church in this 
city whose office's are not ready to arrange with individuals 
or with families for pews in partnership. The tramp system 
is not honest, and certainly is not respectable. Ten clerks in 
one large dry-goods house have two pews adjoining in one 
of our churches, and they present a beautiful sight in their 
places, like plants in the garden o'. the Lord. 

One of the highway tramps, and they are often highway 



232 IREN^US LETTERS. 

robbers, called early one morning at a farm-house in the bam 
of which he had probably been lodging during the night. 
Perhaps his throat was filled with hay-dust : it was certainly 
very dry, and going to the kitchen door he asked the woman 
for a glass of cider. He was promptly and with some energy 
refused. The tramp had in other days learned something of 
the Bible, and he reminded the good woman of the divine 
precept, " Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby 
some have entertained angels unawares." She shut him up 
by saying she was not afraid of making a mistake, for angels 
never went about begging cider before breakfast. 

And we need not have the slightest apprehension of of- 
fending angels or particularly good people, by intimating to 
them when they go about sponging on the public for their 
spiritual drink, that their room is better than their company. 
All who have a real love for the sanctuary, who favor the 
dust of Zion and take pleasure in the stones thereof — all such 
people love to have a place they can call their own in the 
house of God. They love it more than the tents of worldly 
pleasure, to which the gay and the ungodly flock during the 
week, and even on Sunday nights. These pay roundly for 
their enjoyments. It is now seriously discussed whether the 
proprietors of the great music-halls in this city will give 
many thousands of dollars, over and above what the people 
pay, for the support of opera this winter. The sums it costs 
are fabulous. A family of five cannot get good seats at the 
opera for a single afternoon or evening for less than twenty- 
five dollars. If they take those seats twice a week — equal to 
two services on Sunday — they would pay thirteen hundred 
dollars a year for the enjoyment of artistic music, the least 
objectionable of all amusements which the gay world runs 
after. The opera does not present itself the year through, 
but it usually offers its attractions three or four times a week, 
and many families manage to spend five hundred dollars and 
some as many thousands on it in the course of a year. And 
there are no tramps at the opera. They only resort to the 
house of God. The gospel gates are open to all. Whoso- 
ever will, let him come and take the water of life freely. 



GOOD PREACHING WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT. 233 

And this freedom is abused by those who have the means to 
help in the support of the gospel, and in giving it to the 
destitute. 

The true idea of the Christian congregation is the free- 
church system. It has never been successful in this, nor in 
any community of which I have knowledge. A free church 
is looked upon as a charity church. And the American peo- 
ple are too independent to accept charity if they are in dan- 
ger of being found out. Therefore getiteel people do not 
patronize (i*) free churches. But these tramps who go from 
house to house every Sunday to get preaching " free gratis 
for nothing," suppose that they are not known as beggars or 
tramps. They dress well and are well-mannered. They 
want the best seats. And they do not think for a moment 
that they are getting by stealth what they would blush to 
receive as a gratuity, if they were known. 

If a few pews were set apart and advertised as free to such 
as cannot afTord to pay for seats, they would stand empty 
all the year round. 

It would be a grief to me and a wrong to many, if these 
words should be understood to reflect on strangers, or even 
on those who, having their own place of worship, have occa- 
sion to attend on another ministry. Such cases are not even 
hinted at in these remarks. Christians will study that which 
is best for the health of their souls. And when they have 
found the best physician, whether he is Dr. A. or Dr. B. or 
Dr. C, they do well to stick to him. 

"As soon as I got married," said a prosperous man of 
family to me, " I took a pew in the church and sub- 
scribed for the New York Observer. We have held on to 
both ever since." I would repeat the prescription if I were 
giving counsel, and say to all young married people, " Take 
a pew in church, subscribe for a first-class religious newspa- 
per, and stick to them both." A rolling stone gathers no 
moss. Beware of him who is given to change. Do not wan- 
der about from church to church. Identify yourself with 
some one congregation. Get acquainted with the pastor, 
who will bring you into conversation with others. Give 



234 IREN^US LETTERS. 

yourself to church work as your services may be required, 
and with modesty but with fidelity seelc to be useful in some 
department of religious life. Do not be a thief and steal the 
gospel. Be not a tramp, a peripatetic beggar of the bread 
that cometh down from heaven. But be a Christian gentle- 
man or lady, adorning the gospel by a life of honest service 
in that portion of the vineyard which is most convenient or 
best adapted to your gifts and tastes. 

In city or in country you will find yourself stronger and 
better and far happier by association with those whose views 
lead them to the same house of worship with yourself. If 
you have children, their destiny for two lives may be shaped 
for good by this determination. And if you are alone in the 
world, the church is your friend, a strong tower into which 
you may run, and God is there, a present help in every time 
of need. 



RECTOR; MINISTER; PARSON; DOMINE. 

A RECTOR is one who directs : it comes from the Latin 
word for straight, right. The word rex or king is in it. The 
business of a rector is to guide the people aright, as their 
di-rector, teacher, spiritual head. It is a good title for the 
office, but not perfect. 

Minister is another word for servant : he that would be 
greatest among you let him be your servant. He who serves 
the people, ministers to their wants with faithfulness, will 
attain pre-eminence and justly be greatest among them. 
Christ's servants are called ministers in the New Testament, 
and the title is expressive and appropriate. But there is a 
better. And that better is not parson or domine. Neither 
of these implies disrespect, and yet both of them lack ele- 
ments that ought be found in the term by which the leader, 
guide, and guard of the people ought to be known. 

" There goes the parson" might have had reverence in it, 
in Old England and in New England, a hundred years ago. 



RECTOR; MINISTER; PARSON; DOMINE. 235 

" Domine, how do you do ?" was a friendly and honorable 
salutation among the Dutch churches in years gone by. It 
retains its usage in many places now, where the good man is 
familiarly and affectionately addressed by this title. It is the 
Latin Doniinus, and means the master of the house, then a 
schoolmaster, then a clergyman, who is a teacher, rector, and 
the lord of the parish. Thus the word includes the ideas of 
instruction and government, and is a proper term if properly 
understood. 

Pastor is the word: he is a shepherd. He feeds the flock. 
All the tender and endearing thoughts that cluster about the 
term when applied to one who tends the sheep and the lambs, 
surround the word pastor when given to him who is set to 
watch for souls. It implies fidelity. The shepherd's dog 
is often a model of faithfulness. How much more responsi- 
ble is a man than a dog.'' And of how much more value is 
the soul of a man than a sheep.'' It implies watchfulness. 
In an hour we think not the wolf may invade the flock, or 
one of them may go astray. Eternal vigilance is the only 
security. It implies affection. " Lovest thou me .''" asked 
the Great Shepherd and Bishop of souls : " Lovest thou 
me?" "Feed my sheep." "Feed my lambs." It implies 
PERSEVERANCE in well-doing. To get tired of the work and 
to seek rest when the flock is exposed is to be a heartless, 
careless shepherd, who has no love for his work or the flock. 

To be 2i pastor in the church of God is enough to fill the 
right ambition of any good man. The office is not magni- 
fied in the esteem of the ministry and the people as it should 
be : it does not hold the place it did when George Herbert 
wrote his " Country Parson," and Oliver Goldsmith his " De- 
serted Village," and Cowper drew his portrait of the godly 
preacher. The manners, tastes and pursuits of the age have 
invaded the church. This is a matter-of-fact, a trading, 
commercial age. It is also a levelling age. And the worst 
of that fact is that it levels down instead of up. As reve- 
rence for dignities declines, with the divine right idea of 
rulers, the people and pastor come to be less distinct : if 
anything, the pastor has come to be used by the people for 



236 IREN'/EUS LETTERS. 

their purposes, often selfish, rather than as a shepherd to 
whom the flock looks for food convenient for them. Any 
man who keeps an intelligence office, as I do, for ministers 
and people, a sort of matrimonial agency, will testify that 
the applications for a preacher do not generally specify the 
spiritual qualifications required so much as the intellectual : 
" We must have a man of ability to attract attention : the 
other churches have able preachers, and we want one that 
can hold his own." 

This idea of the ministerial office is low and sordid ; de- 
grading to the church and to Christianity. To deliver the 
calling from such debasement a deeper sense of its dignity 
and duty is required. Thai is to be secured by the pastor 
himself getting his own heart and mind saturated with the 
true spirit of Him who sent his disciples forth to feed his 
sheep, to feed his lambs — in other words, to be pastors of his 
flock. 

It was bought with a great price. He " purchased it with 
his own blood." The pastor has such a flock in his care. 
" Grievous wolves" are ready always to enter in, " not sparing 
the flock." They are to be watched, driven off, slain, if pos- 
sible, with the weapons God has provided. This makes the 
pastor an officer in the church militant. He must fight man- 
fully the good fight. The weapons are not carnal, but 
mighty, and he must wield them as a good soldier, for the 
captain of our salvation requires of every soldier under him 
that he be found faithful. 

His work ought to be a life-work. Here is the grand rea- 
son of failure. The place a man is in is too often used as a 
stepping-stone to another, supposed to be higher and better. 
But the way to be the ruler, victor, domine of many things, 
is to be faithful in few things. Called to any post or position 
in the church, let him who is called devote himself to it as 
the one thing that he is to do. Let him not be afraid that 
he will be uncared for, unthoughtof, forgotten. God knows 
where you are. If he has any other work for you to do he 
will send an angel, or some other messenger, to summon 
you to the duty. 



RECTOR; MINISTER; PARSON; DOMINE. 237 

There may be many of God's hidden ones in the most 
retired parish. To find them, feed them, guide them into 
green pastures, God sends the pastor best fitted for that high 
service. He may not be armed with the logic and lore of 
the schools. He may not have the pen of a ready writer or 
a tongue of angelic eloquence, and that trumpet of the 
Pharisee, the religious newspaper, may not herald his name 
to the world ; but in the calm, steady, fruitful fields of use- 
fulness, he feeds the flocks of his Heavenly Father on the 
hills of peace, in the sunlight of divine approval, and the 
gates of glory stand ever open for him and his to enter into 
celestial joy. 

One of the best and most to be envied men whom I reckon 
on my list of friends is the pastor of a little flock, the rector 
of an Episcopal church in the rural districts not far Irom the 
great Babel of New York, Ten, twenty, thirty, now going 
on forty years, he has taught his people the road to heaven, 
while he has led the way. A gentleman, a scholar, a man of 
affairs, with talents and tastes to fill and adorn any station in 
the church, he has declined all inducements to leave the 
charge of his youth; and now, as white hairs admonish him 
that he is no longer young, he rejoices in the work of a life- 
time, and waits to hear the Master say " Come up higher." 
That is the joy set before him. The applause of crowds, 
the praise of the press, the distinction of fame, are lighter 
than the air compared with that eternal weight of glory 
which awaits the pastor who is wise in winning souls; who 
feedeth the sheep, takes the lambs in his bosom, and at last, 
in the day of all days, presents himself to the Great Shep- 
herd and Bishop of souls, saying, " Here, Lord, am I and 
them whom Thou hast given me." 



238 IREN^US LETTERS. 



FANNY KEMBLE ON THE BIBLE AND THE 
THEATRE. 

Fanny Kemble is justly distinguished as one of the great 
tragic actresses of modern times. Her talent, acknowledged 
on both sides of the Atlantic, has won for her fame and for- 
tune. In addition to this great success, she has the still 
higher honor of a name without reproach. The highest vir- 
tues of private life adorn her character with lustre which her 
profession did not dim. 

When she was eleven years of age she was sent from Lon- 
don to a boarding-school in Paris. Of her acquirements at 
this institution she says : " The pupils were required to learn 
by heart, and recite morning and evening, selections from 
the Scriptures. To me my intimate knowledge of the Bible 
has always seemed the greatest benefit I derived from my 
school-training." As she was thoroughly educated, and 
trained to be a brilliant ornament of the highest circles 
of society, to be the companion of the poet Rogers in his old 
age, Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Lord Grey, Disraeli, Washing- 
ton Irving, and all the wits of two generations, it is certain 
that her education was not imperfect. She studied the French 
poets, and committed to memory passages from Corneille 
and Racine; while Shakespeare, Milton, and Walter Scott, in 
her own tongue, were her familiar reading. But she puts 
into writing and prints it in the " Records of her Life" that 
her intimate knowledge of the Bible was the greatest benefit 
she derived from her school-training. This is a very extra- 
ordinary statement, coming from one whose pursuits and 
associations were such as do not appear to require familiarity 
with the Scriptures to promote enjoyment or success. Cer- 
tainly we are not accustomed to suppose that actors and 
actresses and the people in whose society they mingle and 
shine, draw very largely on the pages of God's word as the 
sources of their wit or wisdom, or for examples and illustra- 
tions. It could not be that Miss Kemble attributed her sue- 



FANNY KEMBLE. 239 

cess in the profession to which she devoted her life to her 
Bible studies. If she had been trained to authorship she 
would naturally have been aided by the unexcelled models 
of thought and expression which it contains.- Sir William 
Jones left his recorded opinion that " the Bible contains more 
true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, 
more important history, and finer strains of poetry and elo- 
quence than can be collected from all other books in what- 
ever age or language they may have been written." 

The most famous untaught orator of America, Patrick 
Henry, said, " It is a book worth more than all other books 
that were ever printed." Among philosophers we have the 
same testimony from John Locke, who prepared with his 
own hand a Commonplace Book of the Scriptures, and in 
his meditations on their wonderful wisdom cried out, " Oh 
the depths of the riches of the goodness and the knowledge 
of God !" Poetry and philosophy might draw largely upon 
the Bible, but what benefit would an actress get from inti- 
mate acquaintance with the book ? 

To understand the influence of the Bible upon the life of 
Fanny Kemble, we must keep in mind that the profession 
was always distasteful, positively repugnant, to her feelings ; 
and this was the uniform testimony she bore throughout her 
public life. She regarded it as personally humiliating and 
demoralizing. She expressed to Washington Irving her dis- 
like of it. She wrote in letters to her friends in strong terms 
of her aversion to the stage as a profession. And Madame 
Craven, a French novelist of the better class, testifies that 
" the records of her life by Fanny Kemble demonstrate clearly 
enough that the thought of elevating the theatrical profession 
to the ideal height which many propose must be ranged in the 
category of chimeras ; since this profession, practised with 
the greatest success, and in conditions the most favorable to 
the realization of this dream, has always inspired in Fanny 
Kemble an estrangement for which she can eloquently ac- 
count." What Madame Craven infers is taught in the his- 
tory of the stage from its earliest period. It always was 
what Fanny Kemble found it. She tried her best by example 



240 IREN^US LETTERS. 

and precept to make it otherwise. She left it as she found 
it, or worse. And at this moment in London, Paris, and 
New York it presents attractions to the public from which 
the soul of Fanny Kemble turned away with disgust. And 
her convictions inspired Madame Craven to despair of its 
being reformed and elevated. Fanny Kemble held that the 
nature of the calling is inherently degrading. She was never 
in the hands of her tiring-women, undergoing the transfor- 
mation into a character which she was to personify, without 
being penetrated with a sense of the hollowness and mockery 
of the business in which she was engaged. If she had 
strength to withstand the evil influence of such a pursuit, she 
is one of a thousand, and her testimony ought to be held in 
honor when the vexed question of the moral influence of the 
stage is discussed. I find in her early study of the Bible the 
secret of Fanny Kemble's judgment of the profession, and 
her own noble preservation in spite of it and her surround- 
ings. That there are others in similar pursuits, like Abdiel, 
faithful where others fall, is not denied. But if there are 
many who have stood firm in the midst of danger, and have 
declared their indebtedness to the Bible, I have not met with 
their names. 

Fanny Kemble's " intimate knowledge of the Bible" (those 
are her own words) was obtained by committing to memory 
selections from its pages to be recited morning and evening. 
She had a great memory. She held in it ready for use vast 
treasures of the drama in other languages than her own. 
And in the midst of these riches of the masters of the art, 
creations of human genius, she held in solution, as dew dis- 
tilled from heaven, the wisdom and knowledge of God's holy 
word. This is the very best of all ways to learn the Bible. 
Get it by heart. Commit whole chapters, whole books of it 
to memory. It is easily done in the spring-time of life ; 
and it will abide in old age, a joy and defence, all the way 
along. This great tragic actress startled and entranced the 
play-going world by the wondrous power she had of de- 
lineating by her voice and action the passions of others. But 
deep in her own soul was the living word that she had drawn 



AN ACTOR'S LAST WORDS. 24I 

out of the oracles of everlasting truth, and long years after- 
ward she declared it had been of more benefit to her than all 
else of her school instruction. 

These are Fanny Kemble's impressions of the Bible and of 
the Stage. She owed much to the first, she despised the 
other. 



AN ACTOR'S LAST WORDS. 

HIS LAST WORDS WERE, " NO PREACHER, TELL ROB." 

On Monday morning, at ten o'clock, two funerals were 
attended in this city, but a short distance apart, and the 
dead were taken to the same cemetery. The same bright 
winter sun shone on both coffins. The mourners go about 
the same streets. But the contrast was like that between 
sunlight and midnight, between winter and spring. 

I attended one of them. It was held in the Church of the 
Covenant, of which Dr. Vincent is the pastor. The friend 
whose death had summoned us to the house of God, which 
was now a house of mourning and of triumph, was Mr. Wil- 
liam E. Dodge. He was summoned so suddenly that no 
dying words were said : nor were they needed to attest the 
faith in which he died. His long life had been full of deeds 
as well as words. His daily food was the bread of life, and 
the words he was meditating that early morning when he 
died were read at his funeral ; such as these : " O death, 
where is thy sting?" "There is laid up for me a crown." 
And around his remains were gathered good people, the 
pious, praying, benevolent people, men and women who love 
God and their fellow-men, and many, too, who had felt the 
goodness of their friend and benefactor now gone to the 
Saviour whom he believed and loved. And the " preachers" 
in great numbers were there : men of God, whose work it is 
"to point to heaven and lead the way." They were the 
intimate friends and companions of the departed, and now 
16 



242 IREN^US LETTERS. 

they stood over his precious form and spolce of his virtues, 
his life and example, how he had walked with God, loving 
him in his fellow-men, doing good unto all as he had oppor- 
tunity, and rejoicing to " spend and be spent" in making 
others better and happier, because of him. That immense 
congregation were not in tears of sorrow, but of sympathy; 
not mourning as those who have no hope, but lifted up with 
the comfort and glorious hope of the gospel, as by faith 
they saw their departed friend in the presence of God with 
exceeding joy. As I was going away from the church, a 
gentleman said to me : 

" Such a funeral is an event in one's life. I never attended 
such an one before." 

It was an occasion of thanksgiving and praise, not of 
lamentation and grief : the light and glory of heaven, shin- 
ing on the dead, dispelled the gloom, and the cofRn seemed 
a car of victory in which he was carried to the skies. It was 
indeed a joyous funeral, as hope and faith turn mourning 
into joy, and even the smitten and afflicted say, " Blessed be 
the name of the Lord." 

It is quite probable that I should not describe the other 
funeral with such loving and sympathetic words as I have 
used in speaking of the funeral of my friend. I will, there- 
fore, take the account from the Telegram, the evening edi- 
tion of the Herald. It is in the same column, immediately 
following that of Mr. Dodge's. 

AN ACTOR'S FUNERAL. 

BURIAL OF THE REMAINS OF CHARLES R. THORNE, JR., IN WOODLAWN 
CEMETERY. 

Charles R. Thome, Jr., was buried this morning from his late residence, 
No. 67 Union Place, which, until lately, was the scene of so much gener- 
ous hospitality. About nine o'clock the friends of the dead actor began to 
gather in the parlor. The coffin, covered with black cloth, was in the cen- 
tre of the room, and the panel was removed, showing the face of the 
deceased. He preserved in death much of the manly beauty which had dis- 
tinguished him in life. His father wandered disconsolately from one sofa 
to the other, an occasional sob bursting irrepressibly from his overcharged 
heart. His daughter-in-law, Mrs. William Thorne, the wife of another son, 



AN ACTOR'S LAST WORDS. 24$ 

sought to console him. His own daughter, Mrs. John F. Chamberlain, 
came and sat on his other side, deeply veiled, and did her best to soothe his 
anguish. But it was clear to every one that the old actor was terribly 
shocked by his son's sudden death. The pall-bearers (from the Order of 
Elks) were eight in number — Messrs. A. C. Moreland, of the San Francisco 
Minstrels ; W. L. Bowron, of Haverly's Fourteenth Street Theatre ; Wil- 
liam Morton and F. W. Hawley, of the "World" Combination Troupe; 
J. C. Steinfeld, of the Clarendon Hotel ; Dr. T. C. Conrad ; John L. Wie- 
gand, of Niblo's;.and Robert S. Martin, the Secretary of the New York 
Lodge of Elks. Stuart Robson, the deceased's most intimate friend, and 
his constant visitor during his short illness, advanced to the coffin and made 
a few very touching remarks in a voice tremulous with emotion, concluding 
with the statement that his dead friend had desired that there should be no 
religious services, but that he would recite the lines from the ' ' Tempest" 
beginning, " These, our players, are merely spirits," which Thorne re- 
peated incessantly during the few days of his sickness. Mr. Palmer, his old 
manager, was present. Among others who attended were Mrs. Robson 
and Miss Alicia Robson, Mr. Crane, Mrs. William Thorne, Dr. Heywood, 
and Mr. John Matthews, late of Union Square Theatre. After they had 
taken a farewell look at the countenance of their dead friend, the panel was 
placed over the face. On the lid of the coffin was a silver plate with the 
simple inscription, "Charles R. Thorne, Jr., died loth February, 1883, 
aged forty-two years and eleven months." Two beautiful vases of flowers 
were then placed on the casket, one from Mrs. Chamberlain, the other from 
Mr. Robson. The pall-bearers lifted their burden and carried it down the 
little front garden to the hearse. The family and the pall-bearers followed 
in carriages, but no one else, in conformity with the expressed wishes of 
the deceased. A little crowd formed on the sidewalk as the family took 
their seats, and then walked away, and all was over. The remains were 
interred in Woodlawn Cemetery. 

How that scene strikes the eye of one who has deep relig- 
ious sentiment, I am not curious to inquire. But I did want 
to know what the world would say ; what the present age 
would say; how it lies in the mind of men when unbelief is 
in the air, and philosophers and scientists are telling us that 
faith is played out, and there is no heaven, hell, or hereafter. 
To And an answer to the question, How does such a funeral 
strike an outside mind not hampered by tradition, prejudice, 
and education ? I turned again to the editorial utterances 
of the Herald, and read these words : 

" A Dismal Occasion. — Even to the secular mind there was something 
curiously unsatisfactory in the character of the services held over the mortal 



244 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

remains of the actor, Charles R. Thorne, on Monday last. His last words 
were, ' No preacher, tell Rob ;' and his wishes were so far respected that 
the funeral scene more resembled the custom of ancient Athens than the 
usage of a Christian community. He was buried without prayer, and with- 
out the recognition of an immortal life." 

So it looks to the eyes of this present evil world, the world 
as it is, when men are trying to persuade themselves and others 
that death is an everlasting sleep and the preacher's occupa- 
tion's gone. They will come together to celebrate the birth- 
day of a miserable infidel. They pay a dollar apiece, and 
flock in crowds to hear another blaspheme God and laugh 
at the flames of hell-fire. But this daily paper is the voice 
of the multitude, the cry of the mighty conscience of man- 
kind, saying that such a funeral as this of Thorne was poor, 
degraded paganism, an insult to the enlightened civilization 
of the age. 

There is scarcely a more melancholy scene — nothing in 
Hamlet is half so sad — as the anguish of the old man in the 
room with the body of his dead son, whose last words were, 
" No preacher, tell Rob." He wails, and will not be com- 
forted. His daughters, in the garb of deep mourning, in 
vain attempt to soothe him. There is but one balm for 
such a wounded heart as his.' And that balm was not there. 
" No preacher, tell Rob." The great physician is a preacher 
when he brings the consolations of the Christian faith into 
such a chamber of sobs and sorrow, of weeping and wailing 
and gnashing of teeth. But there is no physician for the 
soul that in the hour of the last struggle rejects the religion 
of Christ and orders the poor body to be buried as dogs are. 

Shakespeare was a great poet, perhaps the greatest of the 
uninspired sons of men. But an actor standing by a coffin 
and spouting Shakespeare to weeping friends is as dreary a 
spectacle as would be the attempt of friends to warm the 
dead man into life by filling his coffin with lumps of ice. 
Solemn mockery ! The devils, who know how it is. laughed 
at the ceremony. Human hearts were wrung with agony, 
and might well exclaim, " Miserable comforters are ye all — 
away, away ; who will show us any good ?" 



AN ACTOR'S LAST WORDS. 245 

While this performance was going on — this travesty of a 
tragedy, this burlesque of a funeral — I was standing by the 
cofhn of my friend and reading with exultation the words, 
" This mortal shall put on immortality : I am the resurrec- 
tion and the life ; he that believeth in me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live," And as I read I heard a voice from 
heaven saying, " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." 

In the evening of that day I stepped out of my own door, 
and a little way off I went into the house where ex-Governor 
Morgan was dying. He had held the helm of State, and sat 
in the Senate of the nation. But he was dying. Honor, 
power, wealth, were all worthless now. Yet his peace passed 
understanding: like a river, deep, great, rolling to the sea 
of infinite Love. He knew whom he believed, and was safe. 

I walked a few steps farther, and entered the mansion 
from which that day we had carried the body of Mr. Dodge 
to his burial. Was there wailing and weeping there.'' A 
holy quiet reigned in the halls ; a pleasing greeting met me 
at the door ; the blessed cheerfulness, born of love and faith 
and hope, pervaded the household like the fragrance of 
celestial flowers. My friend was not there in that graceful, 
cheery, loving form and face that made the house so bright 
a home. But his spirit was there: lingering in the hospi- 
table rooms, among the pictures, by the warm hearths, and 
more than all in the hearts and words of those whom he 
loved, and left behind. We talked of him as of one lost 
indeed to sight, but not far away : with Jesus whom he 
loved, and who had prepared the place for him in a better 
house, a better country, whither we would soon go. 

Returning through the silent streets, I said to myself, 
" All day among the dying and the dead, and I have not 
shed a tear. Death has been swallowed up in victory. 
God has wiped away all tears even now. For them who are 
dying in him, and them who are dead in him Christ will 
bring with him, and we shall be ever with them and the 
Lord." 

This is the power and the joy of the gospel. That other 
thing that saith, " No preacher, tell Rob," I do not know, 



246 irenjEus letters. 

nor care to know. It is the blackness of darkness into 
which the unbelieving spirit goes. For an atheist has a souF. 
His unbelief does not rob him of an immortal soul. I do 
not want to die in that unfaith. But when my turn comes, 
let the preacher come, and standing by the coffin, say, "The 
Lord was his light and salvation : the Lord was the strength 
of his life and is his portion forever." 



ILL-TIMED WIT. 

In a recent letter I sought to vindicate the ministers of 
religion from the charge of being gloomy, dismal, and mis- 
erable men. Perhaps I went too far and conveyed the im- 
pression that they are more merry than is meet, or not as 
sober-minded as becometh the gospel of the grace of God. 
When it was reported to the Bishop of a Church of England 
diocese that a certain rector was more a man of the world 
than he ought to be, he wrote to a well-known layman in the 
region and asked him if the rector's carriage and conversa- 
tion were becoming his profession. To which the layman 
replied that he had had very little conversation witli the rec- 
tor, and he kept no carriage. But if these words have lost 
their early sense, they are still well enough understood by 
intelligent men. The carriage and conversation, the speech 
and behavior of every Christian, and especially of every 
Christian minister, ought to be in harmony with his profes- 
sion. Consistency is a jewel. The origin of that phrase is 
so remote as to be lost in oblivion, showing that there never 
was a time in the history of man when consistenc}'- was not 
the ornament of character. 

It is better to be stupid than witty, when wit is out of time 
and place. It is better not to laugh at all than to laugh 
when mirth is mockery. One of the wittiest of the early 
Puritan divines was the Rev. Mather Byles of Boston, a Tory 
in the 'Revolution, of whom many pages of entertaining 
stories are told. The jokes that he made were often excel- 



ILL-riMED WIT. 247 

lent, and rarely flat. But he did not know when to keep 
them, to himself. That was his misfortune and his fault. It 
was his ruling passion, and proved to be too strong in death. 
For on his dying bed he perpetrated a sorry and most un- 
timely joke, for which he received one of the best and best- 
deserved reproofs on record. The good Bishop Parker of 
Boston called to see Mr. Byles, and the dying man whispered 
in his ear : 

" I have almost got to the world where there are no bish- 
ops." 

"Ah," replied the bishop, " I had hoped you were going to 
the Shepherd and Bishop of souls." 

To make a play upon words on one's dying bed, to be 
merry at such a time, is so revolting to one's sense of pro- 
priety as to be positively shocking. And there are very few 
cases on record of folly so disgusting. No one admires the 
cool contempt of death which the dissolute Charles II. dis- 
played when he apologized to his friends for being so long a 
time dying. In the presence of a greater King than himself, 
even the monarch of England might have been sober. Many 
quaint and ludicrous remarks of ministers, even at funerals, 
are the fruit of ignorance rather than intention. When he 
gave out a hymn at a funeral and stated that it was " selected 
by the corpse," the remark conveyed nothing ludicrous to 
the minister's mind, simply because he was too dull to see it 
in the light with which it flashed on the minds of others. I 
knew a pastor who held the two callings of preacher and 
butcher. He murdered the King's English in the pulpit, 
and killed oxen during the week. He was preaching the 
funeral sermon of a miserably deformed beggar who died in 
squalor, to the great relief of the community, and the 
preacher, looking down upon the dead, exclaimed, " The 
beauty and the glory of the man has departed forever." He 
had heard something like that at some other funeral and 
thought it quite a curl, without perceiving its incongruity 
when pronounced over the subject lying before him. Such 
blunders excite our pity. When unwise speakers forget 
themselves and their high calling so much as to indulge in 



248 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

idle jesting in the pulpit, they are to be censured, not to be 
pitied. I was one of four or five speakers at a religious 
meeting in a crowded church. All the speakers who pre- 
ceded me kept the audience in perpetual merriment with 
their funny stories and bright auroral coruscations. I 
strove, when it came my turn, to say some serious words in 
a serious way, and succeeded so well that the man who fol- 
lowed me assured the audience that such was not my usual 
style, but that I had as much fun in me as any of them. Ac- 
tually he apologized for my good behavior in the pulpit. 
Cowper wrote "John Gilpin," and in the proper time and 
place could make merry ; but Cowper said, 

'"Tis pitiful 
To court a grin when you should woo a soul ; 
So did not Paul. Direct me to a quip 
Or merry turn in all he ever wrote, 
And I consent you take it for your text, 
Your only one, till sides and benches fail." 

Father Taylor of Boston, the sailor preacher, having 
drifted beyond soundings, stopped suddenly and sang out, 
"Friends, I have lost my nominative case, but I am bound 
for the Kingdom." He soon regained his hold on the audi- 
ence, and was once more at home with his theme. That was 
ready wit, and saved the speaker from embarrassment. No 
one could find fault with the preacher. But it was very poor 
wit and unworthy of the pulpit, when the same Mather 
Byles, of whom I wrote above, was disappointed in the com- 
ing of the Rev. Mr. Prince, who was to preach for him, and 
then took for his text, " Put not your trust in Princes." No 
amount of preaching, however eloquent or serious, can atone 
for such an abuse of the divine word. And that naturally 
leads to the remark that ministers, being familiar with the 
words of Holy Scripture, are tempted to use them in such 
connection as to associate them with light and trifling things, 
to their own injury and that of others. I have heard texts 
so used, and they are now inseparably tied to thoughts I wish 
were cleaned out of the mind. It hurt Mr. Nettleton, a 



ILL-TIMED WIT. 249 

blessed man of God, in my youthful esteem, when he said, in 
a stage-coach, as I produced a cake for lunch, " There is a 
lad here who hath one loaf," whereat all the passengers 
laughed. Dean Swift and Sydney Smith shed no lustre on 
the pulpit or the profession which they followed. In other 
callings, and out of their own, they shone in society, and 
their wit has made them famous. But with all their acknowl- 
edged genius and elegant accomplishments, by which they 
kept "the table in a roar," what good thing, as ministers of 
Christ, did either of them do, for which they will be honored 
when the Lord shall make up his jewels. And the men whose 
brilliant jests and amusing stories entertain an audience of 
immortal souls are not the preachers who win the most sin- 
ners to the Saviour. Let us not be too hard on them who 
have such a well of water bubbling up in them that they can- 
not help an occasional explosion, even at the most inoppor- 
tune times and seasons. That is an infirmity of wit for which 
no remedy has been found. When a preacher was censured 
by his brethren for the bad habit of exaggeration, he assured 
them he " had often bitterly repented of it ; it had cost him 
barrels of tears." For such a case there is no cure. 

Some of the most genial, companionable, and jovial men 
whom I have ever known held their wits in such firm, yet 
easy control, that in general society they were not known to 
be men of humor, or specially addicted to pleasantries. They 
were gentlemen of broad and varied culture, familiar with 
elegant letters in many languages and ages, and able to bring 
from the well-arranged storehouse of fertile memory the most 
sparkling gems. Yet they did not scatter them carelessly, 
nor waste them on the common herd. Among congenial 
peers they were shining lights, and nights in their company 
were always brilliant and memorable. How many of them 
are now among the kings and saints in our Father's house ! 
They join Jn 

" The song of them that triumph, 
The shout of them that feast." 

The foam on the sea disappears, but the ocean, fathomless 
and boundless, rolls on. Wit that cheers and illumines the 



250 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

social hour is soon forgotten, but the sober thought of sensi- 
ble people, the deep stores of wisdom laid up by long reading 
and reflection, these are waters of health and life, and happy- 
are they who are full of them. 



OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVINGS. 

They were just about the same as they are nowadays. I 
am rather tired of the lamentations of those who forget the 
divine injunction, " Say not that the former days were bet- 
ter than these." I never had any better times than these 
and of all the years of the world, in the Bible or out of it, 
there was never a time in which it would suit me better to 
live than in this present. 

We read at this time of the year, especially in the religious 
papers, about old-fashioned Thanksgiving days, as if they 
were very different from the modern festivals. But it lies in 
my mind, as if reflected from the surface of a mirror, that 
the way we keep Thanksgiving day now is very much as it 
was (a blank number of) years ago when I was a boy. Prob- 
ably no institution of our early national existence has come 
down to us with so little change. It is of New England 
origin ; but those who lived in parts of the country where 
New England habits prevailed adopted the ways and means 
of the fathers. Their children walked in their footsteps, so 
that it has retained all its chief features of interest and value. 
I remember that the day was a sort of half Sunday. It was a 
holiday from school. In the morning everything went on as 
usual on week-days, until it was time for going to church, 
and then we went to the house of God as on the Lord's Day, 
and worshipped. The sermon was more secular than Sun- 
day sermons were. Topics of interest bearing on the morals 
of the people, though not strictly religious, were freely dis- 
cussed. In times of great political excitement the pulpit was 
disgraced with party-spirit and such violent harangues as 
would better have been delivered in a town-meetinjr. Before 



OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVINGS. 25 I 

my time, in the old days of political strife between Federal- 
ist and Republican, the pulpit was far more frequently abused 
than it is now by ministers who thought it their right and 
duty to teach their congregations which party they ought to 
support. There is a field that lies between the letter of the 
gospel and the law, a field that may be with fitness tilled on 
the Sabbath-day, but is so peculiarly adapted to the day of 
Thanksgiving that we enjoyed the discussion and profited by 
it when the duties of citizens and neighbors were enforced. 
The sermons of the late Dr. William Adams of Madison 
Square were models of this kind of Thanksgiving preaching, 
and a volume of them is a precious legacy which he left to 
the ministry and church. He was the son and fit represen- 
tative of the best type of the New England pastor. 

After we came home from church, we boys had two or 
three hours for out-of-door sport, while the older folks visited 
within. Where I lived the latter part of November was cold 
enough to make ice, and we spent the afternoon in skating. 
I hear it nowadays in table talk, and read it in magazine 
and newspaper stories, that old-time religion, Puritanism, as 
it is sneeringly called, was all hard, sour, cold, juiceless, and 
forbidding. Such talk is the fruit of ignorance or wicked- 
ness. It slanders the dead. I do not suppose there was 
ever on this continent, or any other, a set of men and women 
and children who had more fun, amusement, pleasure, than 
our fathers and mothers had when they were young. Lord 
Macaulay said the Puritans opposed bear-baiting, not be- 
cause it tormented the bear, but because it amused the peo- 
ple. Granted. And is it not a very good reason for opposing 
a beastly, degrading, barbarous amusement ? Is it not a good 
reason 71010 for denouncing bull-fights .'' And is not a Puri- 
tan who disapproves of bear-baiting, because of its demoral- 
izing effect, much more to be had in honor than the jolly 
old Englishman who likes a dog-fight ? Well, we did not 
have such sports, but we did enjoy the games and plays which 
enlivened rural life, encouraged honest rivalry, trained the 
muscles, relaxed the mind, and stirred the blood. Then we 
came in all aglow and sat down to the family feast. It was 



252 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

the dinner of the year. A turkey was sacrificed for the oc- 
casion. It would be almost appropriate to use the word 
sacrificed in a sacred sense. It was the expression of our 
joy, gratitude, and love ; it signified abundance, bounty, and 
good-cheer. We fed upon it together ; the family, from far 
and near, as many as could, were gathered under the ances- 
tral roof-tree ; with one accord in one place. Religion graced 
the board. All honored God as the Giver of every good gift, 
and while we ate and drank, and were merry and rose up to 
play, we felt that in Him we lived, and to Him we owed all 
we were. The fruits of the field — apples mainly and nuts — 
were the dessert, after mince and pumpkin pies had been 
eaten to the very outer verge of human safety. 

In what material respects is the modern Thanksgiving dis- 
tinguished from that of olden times? The night before the 
appointed day the railroad trains are crowded with eager 
citizens hastening to the house of friends, most of them to 
the home of their childhood, to celebrate with a glad com- 
pany the annual family feast. There met, the}' pass the day 
in the same way their grandparents did. There may be more 
culture in the manner of .the guests in the parlor and at the 
dinner-table. The plate may be more elegant and the meals 
cooked and served in better style, but the " feast of reason 
and the flow of soul " will not be more exhilarating, enlivened 
and sparkling with wisdom and wit, more and better stories 
will not be told, the laughter will not be less, or less loud and 
hearty, than when the ancestors of the company were in the 
heyday of their lives. If there is anything to choose between 
the old and the new, the ancient and modern Thanksgiving, 
beyond all manner of doubt the old had a "jolly good time" 
compared with which the moderns are dull and formal and 
cold. And the rest of the day, in our time, is spent as it was 
of old, in amusements more or less becoming a holiday. Up 
in the country the young men have shooting-matches, and 
athletic games, and sometimes pleasure parties to ride, and 
company in the evenings, as in the city we now have con- 
certs and public amusements to which Christian people re- 
sort. Thus the day was, is, and I hope will be spent as the 



A SPICE OF WICKEDNESS. 253 

great Harvest Home has been celebrated in all ages of the 
world by people who know and serve the only living and 
true God. There are abuses, in the pursuit of pleasures, that 
beget pains and do not please God. Let such be forsaken. 
But it is a joy to see and know that the good old New England 
Thanksgiving comes down to us in its original garb, to be ob- 
served as a day of praise, a domestic, social, and friendly day, 
when the softer virtues that adorn and endear are cultivated in 
the worship of God the Father, our Father, and his Son, our 
Brother ; when the habits of a common brotherhood are 
brightened and strengthened, and by giving gifts to the poor 
we remind ourselves that the whole world is kin. 



A SPICE OF WICKEDNESS. 

Dr. Joshua Leavitt was the editor of a religious news- 
paper in this city. He was a smart man, radical in his views, 
sharp and ready in their expression. He retired from the 
paper when he was in full vigor. A few weeks after his re- 
tirement he was met on the street by the late Nicholas Mur- 
ray, D.D. (Kirwan), who said to him : 

" Dr. Leavitt, I am sorry you have left the paper." 

"But I did not suppose," returned Dr. L., "that you read 
it." 

"Oh, yes, I did," said Kirwan ; " while you were its editor 
there was always a spice of wickedness about it that made it 
readable." 

I wonder if this keen witticism of one of the keenest men 
of that day did not have as much truth as wit in it. There 
is no need of pressing the pleasantry into an imputation of 
evil purpose. It was quite as hard on Murray himself as on 
Leavitt, for it is no worse to furnish the spice than to enjoy 
it. The remark was playful, but there must have been some- 
thing behind it in the way of justification, or it would have 
been a poor joke and very rude. 

There is in the pulpit and the newspaper, in conversation 



254 IREN^US LETTERS. 

and public address, a style that has just that feature about it 
which Dr. Murray so deftly described by the brief and quite 
sufficient phrase, "a spice of wickedness." Many a remark 
would fall flat on many an ear but for the emphasis wickedly 
given to it by the use of a strong, improper word. The ear 
of the good man is pained by the epithet, but the wicked 
hear it, and are glad. 

Now, none are perfect. There is in each one of us enough 
of the old Adam left to have elective affinity with what does 
not inhere in saints or angels. It doth not yet appear what 
we shall be. But it is very certain, at present, we are not 
what we ought to be. And this explains the readiness with 
which even good people find amusement and pleasure where 
they should not. 

Just on the outer verge of what is right, and on the edge 
of that which is wrong, is a doubtful and dangerous place, 
where it is exhilaration, if not enjoyment, to walk. I remem- 
ber the fun in boyhood of sliding on ice that bent under the 
feet : to stand on it would be to go through, but to slide 
swiftly across, though not safe, was exciting and possible, 
and therefore great sport. Playing with danger is amusing, 
though often fatal, as every day's reading of the newspapers 
proves. No amount of warning has the slightest tendency to 
abate the use of deadly weapons in household play. Where- 
in consists the fun that a brother has in pointing a loaded gun 
at his sister and " making believe" that he is going to shoot.'' 
There is a spice of wickedness in the thought of killing. He 
would shrink with horror from crime, but finds a secret pleas- 
ure in the rehearsal of a tragedy he would not perform for 
the world. 

In this affinity for what is forbidden lies the secret of the 
boundless popularity of literature tinged — not deeply tainted 
— with wickedness. The gross, sensual, and devilish finds 
open and secret admirers, but not so many as those novels 
and poems that suggest, but do not inculcate, vice — that make 
it attractive even under the guise of condemning it. "You 
naughty, naughty man," saith the siren while she tempts her 
victim to his undoing. When such literature is condemned 



A SPICE OF WICKEDNESS. 255 

by the stern judge as dangerous, he is challenged to point to 
a page or a word that is wicked. He may not be able to do 
it, but he knows there is a spice of wickedness seasoning 
every page, and making it extremely palatable and pleasant 
to the taste of men made a little lower than the angels. 
The voluptuous poetry of the Byron and Swinburne school, 
French novels reeking with scarcely concealed filtli, are not 
more poisonous than the scientific tract which eliminates 
God from creation, or the sermon that makes light of the 
retributions of eternity. They are popular, because the 
people are not saints. Some love darkness rather than light, 
because their deeds are evil, but more love the taste of that 
which has the flavor of sin, because their taste is depraved, 
though they have been hitherto restrained from sins " they 
are inclined to." 

It is probable that a preacher, left to himself, may be, 
tempted to tickle the ear of the multitude by extravagant ut- 
terances that startle the audience ; the few are grieved, while 
the people applaud. They like it. One of these rattlers was 
blazing away with frequent use of the name of the Almighty 
Maker, when a child, looking up to her mother, whispered, 
" What makes him swear so ?" 

Last week one of the courts made a legal decision in a suit, 
pronouncing officially that the use of a certain word, often 
heard among business men, is profane swearing. A word 
may be used properly in one m.anner and sense, while the 
same expression under other circumstances would be highly 
unbecoming. And so it happens that the mixture of strong 
words, the name and attributes of God, in pious discourse, 
may savor so much of the reckless and profane as to be sug- 
gestive of swearing, and seem to the ignorant multitude as 
very splendid oratory. The spice of wickedness is just what 
they like. 

" Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleas- 
ant." It was not the wise man who said that, but it has a 
mighty deal of wisdom in it. It is wonderful, even to the 
outer rim of belief, that the hearts of men four thousand 
years ago so nearly, so exactly, correspond with the hearts of 



256 IREN^US LETTERS. 

those on whom these ends of the world have come. Thoughts 
we would not confess to the one nearest to us are fondled with 
affection. " We know the right, and yet the wrong pursue." 
The sweet morsel under the tongue is forbidden fruit, and all 
the sweeter because it is against the law to taste it. The at- 
traction of gravitation is the strongest force in the natural 
world, and the strongest in the moral world is the attraction 
of gratification. We go to what we like. The evil that is in 
us has fellowship with all the evil in the universe. The leaven 
of ill that pervades our nature leavens the lump of humanity. 
The whole world is kin. 

" Hence we view" that the man who seasons his conversa- 
tion, his writings, his preachings with a spice of wickedness 
has a fair chance of pleasing the many. But he is not the 
highest style of man. To please, to titillate, "to make it 
readable," is not the noblest end of life. But to win souls to 
the true, lovely, and of good report, that is the highest pur- 
pose of the good man, and happy he who has the power, the 
chance, and the will to do it. 



THE BENEFITS OF MOSQUITOES. 

Everything has its uses. We may not, often we do not, 
know what good comes of it, but in the great economies of 
the universe there is something useful in the being, living, 
and doing of everything that hath breath. It is very little 
that we know of anything, and it is much to know how little 
we do know. There was a tim.e when the streets of the city 
were infested with worms dangling from the trees, and spar- 
rows were imported to destroy them. Many now think the 
remedy worse than the plague. Sparrows are a greater an- 
noyance to some people than worms or mosquitoes. But 
neither of these plagues is an unmixed evil. Something may 
be said in favor of both, and quite as much of one as the 
other. 



THE BENEFITS OF MOSQUITOES. 257 

The philosopher and the Christian have remedies for the 
great trials of life. Calamities, fearful to think of, they meet 
with calmness, finding their relief in the principles they have 
taught or learned. But the little ills of life, petty annoyances 
too small in their esteem to be reasoned about or prayed 
over, fret and worry them just as they trouble other people 
who make no claim to high attainments in grace or wisdom. 
The gossip of society, especially in the country, where every- 
body knows everybody, sometimes mars the comfort of sen- 
sitive people, who are easily hurt, and excessively annoyed 
byVhat is said of them. Talking about people is the great 
business of life with many who think themselves amiable and 
sociable. But it is not the good, so much as the evil in 
others, that human nature takes most delight in speaking of. 
To be annoyed with the gossip that comes to the ear of a 
good man or woman is very foolish. It is wisdom to be 
amused by it, and if there be any occasion for the talk, as 
there is apt to be fire where there is smoke, the silly gossip 
may be converted into a " means of grace." The talk was 
ess than a mosquito bite, and proved to be profitable. 

Preachers are sensitive as other men to criticism, and 
sometimes show their annoyance, when unconscious of ex- 
posing their weakness. In every congregation there are 
several mosquitoes: people who display their superior wis- 
dom and virtue by pointing out the defects of the preaching. 
Sometimes they stick their sharp points into the minister 
himself, and tell him plainly how he could do better, es- 
pecially in hitting the man who sits near the pulpit and 
needs to be preached to more plainly. Such criticism is 
always impertinent and annoying. But if there is no reason 
in it, it leads the preacher to be more careful rightly to divide 
the word, so that each may have his portion. While also it 
is a trial that worketh patience, and patience is so rare a 
virtue it is very cheaply purchased by the bites of a few 
mosquitoes. 

The lessons I learned in that school (the pastoral) are 
working out their peaceable fruits in a life of patience and 
long-suffering in another service — the press. Ye yourselves 

17 



258 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

are witnesses of the meekness and good-nature with which I 
take the attacks of the mosquito tribe, which is now as large, 
vigorous, and venomous as when, a frugal swain, I kept my 
flock among the Highlands of the Hudson. Why, there is 
one newspaper that lives and moves to buzz, and bite at 
mine. I never try to kill the mosquito. He keeps at it, 
carping, criticising, trying to sting. It does me good, teach- 
ing me the unloveliness and sinfulness of fault-finding and 
backbiting. It also helps me to see the folly and meanness 
of meddling with other people's business, and the beauty and 
duty of minding one's own. It was an apostle who said 
" Study to be quiet," and who ever saw a quiet mosquito.'' 

The secrecy with which the mosquito makes his attack, 
the darkness under which his approach is hid, suggests the 
person who seeks to pierce and pain you with anonymous 
letters. These are more numerous since the invention of 
postal-cards. It is very easy to inflict a wound in the dark, 
and there is not a baser coward in the world than one who 
writes a letter to give pain and conceals his name. The 
mosquito who infests your pillow and draws blood from you 
in your sleep is braver and better than the petty thief who 
withholds his name when he makes his stab. Still, the little 
rascal has his uses, and I feel the benefit of his bite while 
unable to put him to death. 

But there is no station or calling, no sex or condition, 
which a mosquito may not annoy. Its insignificance is often 
its protection. As little sins escape our notice, and work our 
injury by their number and frequency, so the annoyances that 
come from others are often very small, yet considerable and 
fatal to our peace when their name gets to be legion. For 
it must needs be that offences come. We must go out of the 
world, if we would escape them. They are from within and 
from without ; physical, moral, spiritual, fanciful. We are 
very imperfect, too sensitive, too selfish, impatient of contra- 
diction, conceited and confident, wilful and stubborn. If the 
least thing interferes with our ease and enjoyment, if the 
weather, the fire, the dinner or the supper is not just as we 
would have it, the world is all wrong. We have been bitten 



THE BENEFITS OF MOSQUITOES. 259 

by a mosquito, and are bleeding to death ! Such sensitive- 
ness is great weakness, and there is no religion in it. Better 
take things as they come, make the best of the worst, and 
out of the eater get some meat, and out of the bitter all the 
sweet you can. 

I admire the serene philosophy of a distinguished Ameri- 
can citizen. He was one day sorely berated by his spouse, 
who did not know that a neighbor was in the house and heard 
her giving her husband a piece of her mind. When the two 
friends were alone, the neighbor said : 

" Do you stand that kind of talk ?" 

"Oh, la, yes," he replied; "it amuses her, and don't hurt 
me." 

And there is a higher view to be taken of this matter. 
"This is not our continuing city," as every inhabitant would 
be glad to believe if he lived where mosquitoes most do con- 
gregate. The little troubles that chafe the spirit, annoyances 
too small to be mentioned, yet irritating the surface of the 
body and the soul, are good to remind us that the world is 
full of evil, and perfect peace is not to be ours in this vale of 
tears. It does us good to be stung into consciousness of this 
fact, if we will not learn it otherwise. We must not have 
things so very comfortable, convenient, and satisfying as to 
wish them to be ours always. For there is a higher and 
better life beyond, whither our trials ought to be pushing 
and driving us, if we will not be led by the goodness that 
crowns our days with mercies ineffable. We have no praise 
for penances, or mortifications of the flesh for the sake of the 
soul. That is not Christ's spirit or command. Use the 
world without abusing it. Do not wear tight shoes to keep 
your feet from going astray. Be shod with the preparation 
of the gospel, and walk in the ways of light and peace. Cast 
all your cares on Him who was wounded for us, and by whose 
stripes we are healed. So will the wounds of friends be 
found faithful and good, and even the bites and stings and 
arrows and spears of the wicked will stir us up to fight the 
good fight, and to possess our souls in patience. Let these 
trifles remind us of the buffetings that He endured who bore 



26o IRENMUS LETTERS. 

our sins : who, when he was reviled, reviled not again : was 
made perfect through suffering, and won and wore a crown 
of thorns. 



WAS IT SUCCESS OR FAILURE? 

A WARM DISCUSSION ABOUT A DEAD MAN'S LIFE. 

He had been a good man, a Christian according to the ac- 
cepted idea of the church, regular in the routine duties of 
life, correct in his habits and kind to his neighbors, whom 
he was always ready to serve. He loved his neighbor better 
than himself. Often he let his own vineyard lie waste while 
he worked in theirs. Everybody spoke of his warm heart, 
and said there never was a better man in the town. But he 
did not get ahead ; he and his family lived from hand to 
mouth ; nothing was laid up for a time of need. He bor- 
rowed when anybody would lend. And when his health was 
feeble and his family expenses increased, his friends helped 
him, and he had not spirit enough left to feel bad about it. 
He limped along from year to year, getting a little lower and 
still lower. His wife and daughter privately sewed and sold 
their work. Only a very few knew the situation. He died 
respectably, and was buried in the midst of sincerely mourn- 
ing people who never knew anything against him, and rather 
liked him as a clever, well-meaning, kind-hearted man. Was 
his life a success .'' 

A friend and I differed and agreed about it. We both 
thought him far from being a successful man, both felt that 
in many respects he was a failure. We differed as to the de- 
gree of his failure ; and what it is that makes a man worthy 
of being called successful. 

When my friend stood before a school of boys to address 
them, his way of stimulating them was to tell them, if they 
worked hard in school, and afterwards, they might one day 
be Mayor of the city, Governor of the State, and President of 
the United States. He also told them that the rich men of 



PVAS IT SUCCESS OR FAILURE? 26 1 

the country were once poor, and by industry, perseverance, 
and hard work had made millions of money, and were now 
able to live like nabobs. Thus he taught the boys to aim at 
high office and great wealth as the true measure of success. 
Here we differed. I told him frankly and very plainly, that 
such talk to the boys was bad : it set before them a false 
standard of excellence : there was no virtue or merit in office 
or money, and neither of them was a fit object of pursuit as an 
end ; they are to be sought only as the means of accomplish- 
ing something for the good of others and the glory of God. 
Then we went back to our poor dead friend's memory. I 
held that he just missed success in life. 

"Just missed success !" he exclaimed. " Why what on earth 
do you call success, I would like to know? That man surely 
never came within a thousand miles of success." 

" Hold on," I replied. " Not quite so fast or so strong, if 
you please. I will preach a little. You have heard me preach, 
I guess." 

" Yes, indeed. As Lamb said to Coleridge, I never heard 
you do anything else." 

That is rather hard, I said, but you have a totally mistaken 
notion as to true " success in life." And when you tell young 
men to aim at getting high office or great wealth, as the goal 
and sure measure of success, you mislead them just as you 
would if you say to a group of young women that success 
means to get a husband with many bags of gold, or a title to 
his name. You know that to put such an idea into a girl's 
head is worse than nonsense. And as only one man out of 
50,000,000 of people can be President at one time, you would 
make it out that with that prize, as the measure of success, 
the many must fail while a few only succeed. Now you must 
settle first the right meaning of the word. In battle, victory 
is success, because victory is the object. Defeat is failure. 
To find a lost sheep is the object of search, and success is 
finding it. To miss it is failure. Speaking or writing for a 
prize makes success or failure very plain to him who striveth 
for the mastery. So if those prizes which you set before the 
young are the pearls of great price, the real end of the high 



262 IRE N^ US LETTERS. 

aspirations of the immortal soul of a brave, good man, then 
you are right and I am wrong. But I despise your idea. 
There is no religion, no truth, no good, no Christ in it. You 
preach a low, sordid, debasing doctrine that Epicurus or 
Heliogabalus might accept as orthodox, but Jesus, who be- 
came poor for our sakes, condemns in language that con- 
sumes the spirit of your gospel. My notion of the chief end 
of man is to be happy in doing good. Keep this object in 
view, and get your own living by some honest and useful oc- 
cupation, and your life is a success. It will be a failure if 
you do not support yourself and those depending on you. 
Here is the difference between success and failure. Our 
dead friend had all the elements of success in him but one." 

" What was that, pray .?" 

He lacked one thing, and one only, and that was energy. 
Do you know what energy is? 

" I think I do : perhaps you attach some meaning to it that 
I do not." 

Energy is internal force : not physical, not mental or spirit- 
ual, except when we speak of that power working in us to 
will and do God's pleasure. Energy is the native force of 
character impelling us to action. The want of it is laziness. 
The two principles make all the difference in the world 
among men who otherwise are equally gifted for the battle 
and the race of life. Our dead friend was lazy. That is the 
plain word for the only vice he had. All his virtues, not 
even God's saving grace, made him anything to his family or 
society, to the church or the world. He was lazy. He was 
kind-hearted and sympathetic, and fluent in prayer, and had 
the gift of utterance and continuance in religious meetings. 
But he would not earn bread for his household, because he 
had not that force working in him which is just as essential 
to success in this life as divine grace is to the soul's salvation 
in the life to come. Books, essays, sermons, etc., are multi- 
plied to define the means of success in life. They are mostly 
bad books, bad essays, and bad sermons. Because they pro- 
ceed on the error that greatness of some sort, distinction, 
influence, riches or office is implied in success. It is not. 



GAMBLING IN THE PARLOR. 263 

The good man or woman who in the common walks of life 
earns an honest living by useful work, is one of the pillars of 
the commonwealth, a defence or ornament to the State. Mil- 
lions of such people make a great State. These are the salt 
of the earth : the saviours of society, the friends of God. 

" But you needn't get excited about it : I can hear you just 
as well if you speak a little more softly." 

I beg your pardon — but I would give you a realizing sense 
of what energy is : and I would like to know if my sermon 
has been a success ? 

" I will think it over. I am with you in the principle of 
the thing, and feel the force of what you say." 

Then you are half converted. 



GAMBLING IN THE PARLOR 

A mother's letter and the answer. 

"While I am writing, the children, with two or three of 
their young friends, are at play in the parlor. The word play 
does not mean what it did when I was in my teens, as my 
children are now. Nor will I undertake to say that the plays 
of my younger days were more innocent and less dangerous 
than those now enjoyed by young people. I was brought up 
to regard the game of cards with decided aversion, as always 
associated more or less intimately with gambling. If every 
one playing cards was not actually gambling, it was supposed 
to lead to it, and if boys and girls became fond of the game, 
there was every reason to fear they would fall into that vice 
by and by. But now it is common to see card-playing among 
the amusements of the evening in the best of families. At 
summer hotels all sorts of people, which must include good 
people, play cards all day long, especially when the weather 
keeps them in the house. I observe that they play for small 
sums of money, so very small as not to make it unpleasant 
to lose, and not large enough to cause any great anxiety to 



264 IKEN^US LETTERS. 

win. The young people in the parlor at home, or in little 
circles in one another's houses, are in the habit of playing 
for ' favors,' trifling articles which they freely give and take 
in other social pastimes. Now they win them or lose them 
in a game of cards. My children and their young friends 
are playing for ' favors ' now while I am writing; I am very 
anxious about it; they have grown so much wiser than their 
parents that they are sure there is no harm in it. They tell 
me that the children of ministers play in the same way; and 
what I say seems to be of no use. Do you think it is right ? 
Will it be too much to ask you to give your opinion in one 
of your letters }" 

THE OPINION. 

It is wrong to play cards, or any other game, for any stake, 
prize, money, goods, or anything of value, however small. 
It is not the amount won or lost in play that makes the game 
right or wrong. Only a very small-minded person would 
think it right to play for sixpence and wrong for a shilling. 
The difference is not in the stakes ; the only question is the 
right or the wrong of playing for stakes at any time. 

A clergyman riding in the country saw a packet lying in 
the road, and upon dismounting picked up a pack of cards. 
He was putting them in his pocket to take them home to 
amuse his children, when he said to himself, if I were to be 
thrown off and killed, and this pack of cards were found 
in my pocket, it would not read well in the newspapers. He 
threw them over the fence and rode on. 

As I was brought up with the idea that playing cards is in 
itself wrong, I have never looked upon the game with any 
favor whatever. I have all along in life noticed that it is in 
the line that gambling takes from the first game where the 
player seeks to win a cent or a "favor" or a shilling, up to 
the game or down to the game where a fortune is the stake 
to be lost or won. Up in the country the boys used to play 
cards in the barn, hiding away from parents who would for- 
bid and punish them if they were found out. And I know 
that such habits of secret gambling were the beginnings of 



GAMBLING IN THE PARLOR. 265 

evil courses that had sad endings. If we could trace a thou- 
sand instances of wrong-doing by clerks, bank-tellers, and 
cashiers, treasurers, trustees, speculators, and others, we 
would find that in nine cases out of ten, perhaps nineteen 
out of twenty, the first step was a game of cards for a mere 
trifle. It may be a total misapprehension on my part ; but I 
think cards have wrought more evil in the world than any 
other device of the evil one to tempt men to their ruin. All 
games of chance have the dangerous element of gambling 
in their nature, and should be avoided ; while games of skill, 
if played for the sake of winning anything, are also wrong. 
It is hard to make young people see this distinction clearly, 
but it is real and important. To take from another his prop- 
erty against his will and without rendering an equivalent, 
violates the eighth and tenth commandments. The gam- 
bler's occupation is composed of covetousness and robbery. 
You see this : I wish your children would see it. 

I was taken down by the answer a lady made to me at a 
church fair in this city. It was full of gambling stalls, and 
ought to have been raided by the police and broken up. I 
remonstrated with the minister who was present, but he said 
he was utterly powerless to prevent what he knew was wrong : 
" the ladies," he added, " have it all their own way." One of 
these ladies had an oil-painting, a " portrait of Jesus Christ : 
to be disposed of by raffle, a dollar a chance." As I was 
passing her stand she urged me to take a chance. I declined, 
and gave my reasons for thinking it very wrong; and when 
I had finished an elaborate argument, she said, " Yes, I don't 
like it ; I never can win anything." Her bad " luck" was the 
only objection she had to the game, and my logic had not 
gone through her hair. 

And if children are made familiar with gambling by being 
permitted to play for gain, they will infallibly grow up with the 
idea that there is no wrong in the practice even when it is 
employed on a larger scale. It is not an easy matter to in- 
duce young people to think seriously about anything, and 
especially so when you try to convince them that an amuse- 
ment they are fond of is wrong. They like it, and see no 



266 IREN^US LETTERS. 

harm in it, and at the worst it is only a little thing. But there 
is no sin in the world so small as to be innocent. To eat a 
forbidden fruit was in one sense a very trivial matter. But 
a world of woe was the result. On an elevated plain in the 
State of Vermont was a lake that came within a few feet of 
the edge of the hill that overlooked a lovely, fertile, and 
happy vale. Some idle boys amused themselves by making 
a channel for a tiny stream from the lake : as it ran out it 
sank into the sand and worked its way along, deepening the 
channel; the breastwork that had held the waters securely 
from time immemorial soon began to crumble ; the hill-side 
yielded ; the flood descended ; the people fled before it, and 
ieft a field of desolation and ruin where once was a peaceful 
valley filled with happy homes. That was the result of let- 
ting out a little water, a tiny stream at first that a lamb 
might drink up. It is not likely that you will ever hear of 
one case in a hundred of young people who are ruined by 
habits of gambling. A president of one of our city banks 
said to me, " It is a matter of common occurrence for us to 
be called on to cover up or overlook wrongs in business 
houses." Where one case gets into the newspapers, fifty are 
hushed up, for the sake of others who would suffer shame by 
by exposure. 

But this is not the worst of it. I do not plead with young 
people to let cards alone merely nor chiefly through fear 
that they will become gamblers, and be caught in crime to 
which gambling leads. It is sin to play cards or any other 
game for gain, however small that gain may be. " It is a sin 
to steal a pin." You have no right to say the sin is so small 
that God will not mind it. He numbers the hairs of your 
head, and when one falls out he notices it. Sin he hates 
with infinite hatred. It is the principle of the thing which 
you ought to look at. And you may be as sure as you are 
of your own existence that it is not right, but is certainly 
wrong, to win or lose anything in a game of chance or skill. 
You may take this rule with you into life. It is good to be 
kept in mind in school and out of it; in amusement and in 
work; in buying and selling ; in the family and the market, 



WELL AND WANTED. 267 

on 'Change or off : anywhere -and always God hates sin. 
And gambling in things great or small is sin. Therefore the 
moral of it all is— never play cards for favors or money — for 
that is certainly wicked. And if you would be advised by 
me, I would say let them alone altogether. 



WELL AND WANTED. 

He has just left my study. A handsome old man, straight 
as a forest pine, his locks were "silvered o'er with age." 
Nothing else about him or in him was old. He did not boast 
of his vigor, but was telling me how greatly he enjoyed his 
work, and he made this remark : " Thank God, I am well, 

AND WANTED." 

I did not ask " How old art thou .?" though there is scrip- 
tural precedent for the question regarded by some as im- 
proper if not impertinent. Some men are very squeamish 
about their age. They keep it from their intimate friends. 
It is a foolish sensitiveness, and has not the excuse that is 
found in the remark made to a man who was always silent in 
company, " If you are a fool you are wise, if you are wise you 
are a fool." That is not so paradoxical as at first it appears. 
If the man was a fool it was wise to keep silence, if he was 
wise it was foolish not to speak, for his wisdom might be 
helpful to others. 

But for the most part there is little need that a man tell 
his age. It speaks for itself. It tells its own story. There 
are outward and sensible signs by which the days of one's 
years are reckoned almost as clearly as the lifetime of a tree 
is told by the concentric rings about its heart. 

My venerable friend with his hoary head, sunny and cheery 
face, eye bright, hand warm and natural force unabated, was 
the incarnation of health, 'peace, and joy in the Lord. 
Abounding in service, diligent in his master's business, doing 
with his might what he has to do, there was not the sign of 
decay in his voice, his figure, or his feeling. And I am writ- 



268 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

ing to you, who are young, with a faint hope of leading you 
to take pattern after this lovely old man. 

He is well. It is a Christian duty to be well. Once I 
ridiculed the dogma laid down by a celebrated teacher that 
it is a sin to be sick. And I still believe it to be wrong to 
say so. In this world of disease and death it is impossible 
for all to avoid illness always. We bear about in our bodies 
the seeds of sickness. Germs of mortal ailments float in the 
brightest sunlight. We inhale them while ministering to those 
whom we love and serve. Therefore it is not true in the ab- 
stract that it is a sin to be sick. But it is fearfully true that 
the larger part of our physical suffering is the result of our 
imprudence, neglect of well-known duty, or positive violation 
of the obvious laws of health. These laws violated in youth 
may not be followed by capital punishment at once, but the 
time will come when the penalty must be paid to the utter- 
most farthing. Murder will out. And if the boy or young 
man, the young pastor, or man of business does those things 
that ought not to be done, and so hurts his eyes, or his 
lungs, or his voice, the tax-gatherer will come for him, and 
he will have to settle up. He feels so well that in his folly 
and ardor he thinks he can study night and day, preach three 
times on Sunday, eat late suppers, visit every day, burn the 
candle at both ends, and never say die. There is a limit to 
human endurance. Common-sense is not altogether a lost 
sense. And it stands to reason that a harp of a thousand 
strings will not keep in tune seventy years if it is played on 
all the while. Some of the strings will break, and if you do 
not keep a bright look-out, the whole concern, like the par- 
son's chaise, will go all to pieces at once. There is a silly 
motto attributed to some distinguished preacher, Wesley, 
Whitefield, or I forget his name, " Better wear out than rust 
out." What is the use of doing either.^ A man who short- 
ens his days by overtasking himself is a suicide, and he who 
lays himself up in cotton when he ought to be at work is a 
drone deserving many stripes. Another saying has driven 
many a good Christian to an untimely grave : " A man is im- 
mortal till his work is done." True, our times are in the 



WELL AND WANTED. 269 

hand of Him who setteth up one and putteth down another. 
But a Christian worker who neglects the laws of health on 
the miserable plea that God will take care of him, might as 
well jump oflf the Brooklyn Bridge, expecting that Provi- 
dence will spare his life to go to a prayer-meeting over the 
river. 

In youth and riper years practise temperance, purity, 
healthful sports, and vigorous exercise ; avoid every waste of 
physical force ; train for the race and battle of life, and keep 
right on with every faculty of mind and body in healthful 
play and development ; avoid excess of rest or labor ; and 
grow with every joint and member fitly compacted together. 
Blessed is he who understands these things, while the evil 
days come not nor the years draw nigh, when he shall say, I 
have no pleasure in them. 

Because, if he has sense enough — sense, not grace, is want- 
ing — to understand this, he will have health all his days, sub- 
ject on]y to those calamities of which I have spoken, that no 
caution or insurance will prevent. The harp will keep well 
in tune. The machine will do its work well. You will not 
wear out or rust out. And you will be immortal till your 
work is done. 

He is wanted. That is grand. An old man wanted ! 
What for } What can he do ? Who wants him ? Who 
cares for an old man ? But my happy, hearty, hoary friend 
said " I am well and wanted." That was evidence to him 
and to me that he was not to die just yet, nor to be turned 
into the street like a superannuated horse; or sent to the 
almshouse as a pauper, nor even to go on the fund that God 
and the church provide so justly as well as kindly for them 
who have been faithful e'en down to old age. And I do not 
know a sight more painful than that of one who has spent 
all his life and living in making the church and the world 
rich by his ministry, and in his last days is left to the cold 
charity of a generation that knows him not. There is noth- 
ing for him to do. Perhaps he did all the work the Lord 
had for him long ago. He is not wanted now, and whether 
ill or well, his day is over : the night is at hand when no man 



270 IRE N ALUS LETTERS. 

can work. The church is often very ungracious and unwise 
in turning away from her old pastors because they are old. 
They preach better now than ever. Out of the wells of 
deep and holy Christian experience, they teach with wisdom 
and love to which they were strangers in former times. No 
matter, they have committed the unpardonable sin of grow- 
ing old, and, like the Chinese, they must go. And, as Mr. 
Webster asked, "Where shall they go.^" Pulpits are shut 
against them. They cannot dig. They ought not to be al- 
lowed to beg. And heaven is not ready for them yet. Un- 
happy men ! having saved others, you are now left out in the 
cold yourselves. But it was the joy of my splendid old friend 
that he could say with a smile of intense self-satisfaction, 
pride, and thankfulness, " I am well and wanted." In the 
pulpit, in the field of Christian work, with his hand on the 
car of human progress, an active, warm, and wise philanthro- 
pist, the ardor of youth tempered by the judgment of matu- 
rity, having the added strength which the confidence of 
others earned by long service secures, he has himself grown 
to be a power, and his shoulder to the wheel of any good 
cause is as if Hercules himself were there. 

Yes, glorious old man, thou art wanted because thou art 
wise and strong. Thy brains are in good condition and thy 
heart is sound as a nut. It beats in time with the march of 
truth. The day of triumph is in prophecy, and the dawn 
streaks the East to tell of its coming. Thou art wanted yet. 
Thy hoary head is a crown of glory. Thou art shining even 
now like the angel in the sun. He who walks among the 
golden candlesticks will soon set thee above the stars. And 
as thou goest up to thy throne and kingdom, a voice like 
that of many waters, sweeter far than the music of angel 
choirs, shall say to thee. Thy work is done and well done ; 
thou art well, and wanted here. 



A MODERN MAGDALEN. 2^1 



A MODERN MAGDALEN. 

Into a little chapel where every night the gospel is 
preached to the poor, a young woman found her way. She 
came alone. Unless God was her friend she had not one in 
the world, and she did not know Him. She was a poor, lost 
creature, who could say with truth, No man or woman careth 
for my soul. Sick, half drunk, wretched, forlorn, despised 
by her own sort, so far down that she had no shelter, at- 
tracted by the singing that she heard as she wandered along 
by the open door of the chapel, she stopped to listen. A kind 
voice invited her to enter, and in a moment she was in the 
midst of light, warmth, and music. It was not altogether 
new to her, for instantly she remembered the church in the 
country, where in childhood she heard the gospel, and sat 
with her parents and friends in the house of God. Ten years 
in the city where she had lived a life of sin and shame, had 
made those early scenes to seem like dreams of another 
world. But it all came back to her now, and she sank into 
a seat near the door, filled with wonder and awe. 

This and what more is to be told, happened in this city in 
the latter part of last year. She rested and remembered. 
The new surroundings both excited and soothed her. It 
was an old life and a new life. Tunes sung in her childhood, 
hymns sweet to her then, the name of Jesus not heard but 
in mockery since she came from home, took hold on her 
sinful soul, and wrought a strange tumult within her breast. 
And after the singing of these songs a man rose in his seat 
and told what the Lord had done for his soul ; how he was a 
thief and a drunkard and miserably poor six months ago, 
when he was brought to this house and heard of Jesus Christ, 
who could save the worst of men ; how he had been saved ; 
and from that time onward he had been kept from falling, 
had found honest work to do, and was trying to lead a new 
and better life ; Christian friends had stood by him, cheered 
and blessed him, and he was happy in the service of God. 



272 I RE N^ us LETTERS. 

Then a woman, yes, a woman, young and bright, stood up 
and with cheerful voice spoke pleasingly of the joy she had 
in loving Christ Jesus, and trying to follow in his steps. " A 
few months ago," she said, " I wa s a wanderer in this great city, 
without home or character or friends, staying only for a sea- 
son in the house which is the gate of hell. I scarcely know 
how I came here, but the good Lord sent me to learn the 
way of salvation. And I believe I am saved." 

When the poor woman heard these and other testimonies, 
she was like one who dreamed. By this time she was sobered, 
but a sense of dreadful weariness, of faintness, came over her, 
and she sank down as if dying. Those near her raised her 
from the floor, and she was laid upon a bench, where she was 
quiet till the meeting was out. Then the kind-hearted 
friends who waited to talk with any who would hear a 
word of personal conversation found her weeping as though 
her heart would break, and evidently very ill. She had no 
place of refuge, and they took her to a house near by, where 
they were wont to provide for the destitute thus thrown upon 
their Christian charity. She would not give her name, nor 
the address of her parents. She did not know whether they 
were living or dead. But the desire had sprung up in her 
soul to forsake sin and go to the Saviour. The way of life 
was set before her plainly, and much prayer was made for 
her by her bedside day after day and in the chapel. It was 
evident that she was dying of consumption. She might live 
some months, and she did hold out week after week, but 
without wish to live. Her sin seemed to fill her soul with 
horror and shame. Once she did say, with a great sob, " I 
want to see my mother," and, drawing the sheet over her 
face, she wept bitterly. When she was calmed again, she 
refused to speak of home or parents, and said she wanted 
none but Jesus : he alone could do poor sinners good. 
There was much reason to believe that she was forgiven and 
received into the loving arms of Him who will in no wise 
cast out the repenting sinner. " Go in peace, thy sins be for- 
given thee," were words of Jesus Christ to poor sinners when 
he was here. Such ministries as the poor can give each 



A MODERN MAGDALEN. 2/3 

Other, she had, as disease wore her away, and after about four 
months she died, hoping in the mercy of God through Jesus 
Christ. 

To the same place where she first heard the songs and was 
struck to the heart by the name of Jesus, the coffin was 
brought with her wasted form inclosed, and a little com- 
pany of strangers, yet friends united by the kinship of com- 
mon sin, common suffering, and a common salvation, sat by 
the dead. The grace of God was magnified and displayed in 
her case, and after such testimonies as her life and death 
afforded to the blessedness of the gospel, the body was borne 
to the grave. It is barely possible that the parents who have 
long mourned a lost child may read in this sad story of the 
death of their own. 

But the story is not told as in itself extraordinary or inter- 
esting : it is told for a specific purpose, and that is, to show 
that away outside, far from the stated means of grace, in 
every great city, there are thousands perishing in sin, un- 
reached by the voice of Christian love : young men and 
women prodigals from their father's house, sick and sore, all 
the more hopeless if they know not their ruined state. We 
sit in our comfortable pews and listen to the glorious gospel, 
but it does not reach the ears of the perishing outside. There 
is no living agency now adequate to lift up the mass of sin 
and misery within the sound of our church-bells. 

Of late these missions to the very lowest strata of our poor 
humanity have deservedly commanded the sympathy and 
support of well-to-do Christians. Such agencies ought to be 
multiplied in every part of the city where poverty and sin 
herd in a common misery. There is no possible remedy for 
the ruin in which these people are involved but in the gos- 
pel and what the gospel inspires. This is able to save unto 
the uttermost. There is no problem of society which the 
gospel cannot solve. Its spirit should make every heart and 
every purse an agency to seek and save the lost. And if we 
have not that spirit, the publicans, whose traffic begets so 
much woe, and the harlots may get into heaven before us. 
i8 



274 irenjEus letters. 



THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL; 

OR, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND REQUESTS FOR 
PRAYER. 

They have never been counted, but taking thd average 
number that reach the prayer-meeting in Fulton Street every 
week, it is far within bounds to say that a quarter of a milHon 
requests have been received. 

When reading the songs of the soul gathered into books, 
out of all ages and lands, we are impressed by the fact that 
the universal heart of man sings itself out in the same 
thoughts and words : the old Latin hymns and the Greek, 
the psalms of David, the songs of Zion in every period of 
her story, breathe the same aspirations after God, with the 
same confessions of sin and of penitent sorrow, and again of 
faith, hope, and joy. It is this kinship in Christ of all his 
people. One in him. 

But the unity of desire as shown in prayer is still wider 
than in praise — 

" Let those refuse to sing 
Who never knew our God, 
But children of the Heavenly King 
Should speak their joys abroad." 

There are in this wide world of ours millions who have not 
yet found the Saviour to be theirs, and yet have longings 
after him : longings inspired of him whose gracious influ- 
ences were bought by the blood of that Saviour. On how 
many human souls the Spirit works to will and do of God's 
good pleasure. He who worketh only knows. The number 
is not restricted to those who hear the gospel. There is a 
light for every man who cometh into the world. David 
Brainerd found such a man among the Indians at the forks 
of the Delaware, a man who had never heard of the Chris- 
tian's God, but he had felt the evil and burden of sin, had 
been comforted, and thought there must be some persons 
somewhere who felt as he did, and he longed to go and find 



THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL. 275 

them. Among these 250,000 petitioners are many sin-sick 
souls, who have not yet found peace in believing. They 
have heard of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of David, as having 
a favorite resort in Fulton Street, in the city of New York. And 
they write their wants. The hunger of their souls for the 
bread of life, their thirst for the waters, finds intense ex- 
pression in these letters. Two thousand miles away in the 
West, or five thousand miles off across the sea in the East, 
to them has gone the report of what great things God has 
done for others, and they cry out in these letters that he 
would have compassion on them and come to save. As the 
pool of Siloam had its multitude waiting to be healed, so 
thousands surround this gospel Bethesda, knowing full well 
that the God of salvation is as near to the suppliant in 
Oregon or India as he was to Bartimeus by the wayside in 
the Holy Land. And he writes, " Thou Son of David, have 
mercy on me." 

But these cries are few compared with the appeals for divine 
assistance that come from those who themselves have tasted 
that God is good. The infinite variety of wants is known 
only to Him unto whom all hearts are known. It is truth- 
fully said of each heart that it knows its own bitterness. 
And there are thousands who do not share their bitter with 
their dearest human friend. Many of these letters enjoin 
the most sacred secrecy, and the injunction is religiously ob- 
served. Mr. Lanphier, who has been with the meeting from 
the begining, and has opened all these censers filled with 
prayers of saints, buries in his own breast the names and ad- 
dresses of those who shrink from being known as suppliants 
in behalf of themselves, or a wife, a husband, child, or friend. 
But their names are all written in God's book of remem- 
brance. He counts their tears. He hears their prayers. 
And from the fulness of his mercy and wisdom he sends 
them answers of peace. The secret sorrow df one mourning 
the intemperance of a beloved friend, dear as life, a son or 
husband, is as frequent a cause of writing as any other. At 
this present time intoxicating drinks produce more misery 
than all other second causes in the civilized world. Sin is 



276 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

the father of all sorrow, and intemperance being the most 
hideous monster of sin begotten, is the progenitor of more 
woe than any other of the race. Families made unspeaka- 
bly wretched by this awful vice cry out from all lands for the 
help of God. All human aid has failed. And the arm of 
the Lord is not shortened, but it will not always be stretched 
out to save men who destroy themselves. They deserve 
everlasting destruction from his presence, and if in the day 
of their calamity he should laugh, and send them away into 
outer darkness, where is eternal gnashing of teeth, the uni- 
versal verdict of good men and angels would be, " Served 
them right." 

It is beautiful to observe the sweet simplicity of faith with 
which many earnest believers ask for temporal blessings. 
They know it is quite as well-pleasing to God to give bread, 
as the Holy Spirit. And they ask for daily bread, as Christ 
taught his disciples to pray. They want to be prospered in 
a secular undertaking, and they pray for it. They do not 
look for a special interposition, a miracle of feeding or 
clothing: but they believe that he will work in his own 
good way. Sometimes the answer has reached the suppli- 
ant through an instrumentality they never knew. A father 
wanted help for a daughter who was earnestly seeking with- 
out success to find a situation where she might be usefully 
supported as a teacher. All avenues were apparently closed. 
Private and family prayer had been made long and in vain. 
He sent his request hitherward ; and when it was read it fell 
on the ear of one who instantly bethought him of the very 
place the young lady was seeking. The inquiry was easily 
made, with the result desired. Unbelief says it was a cheap 
advertisement. Christian faith sees the goodness of divine 
Providence suggesting this cheap advertisement, to reach 
the eye and ear of the man whom the Lord had provided to 
give the answer. All that has been written on the subject 
of prayer does not throw one ray of light on the problem of 
its influence on the mind and will of a Being Infinite and 
Unchangeable. Sufficient is it for the little creature man, 
a mote in the sun of boundless benevolence, to know that 



SHORT, SHARP, AND DECISIVE. 2/7 

the great All Father has said by his Son, "Ask and you shall 
receive." Millions testify that they have received, and often 
when they did not get what they asked for, there came some- 
thing better that satisfied the hunger of the soul. It is 
sweet to rest on his promises: to know that all things will 
work out his glory, and the good of his children. These are 
his witnesses. Here is the faith and patience of the saints. 
They believe and wait. Even a lifetime is only a moment in 
the roll of eternal ages, and what thou knowest not now, 
thou shalt know hereafter. The years of God are past our 
reckoning. Mr. Webster said "We do not understand the 
arithmetic of heaven." But we may be very certain that 
when these 250,000 requests for prayer are counted and 
registered in the ledger of heaven, it will be found that not 
the least of them all, sent up to the throne m faith, was 
returned unanswered. 



SHORT, SHARP, AND DECISIVE. 

The man who said if he had never done a great thing, he 
was sure he never did a long thing, is my ideal of a man of 
words and action. Life is so short and time so precious, that 
every man who uses the time of others ought to bear in mind 
that he lives for them as well as for himself, and must not 
rob them of what he can never return. 

This hint is always in order, but never more timely than at 
this season of the year, when so much public speaking is to 
be done and endured. 

It was extravagant in the great preacher who said to his 
brethren " Let your sermons be short ; no conversions after 
the first half -hour." There are occasions when an hour is 
too short a time for a sermon, and there are men who, on 
such occasions, hold the attention of an audience and make 
the impression deeper in the last half-hour than the first. 
We are often told of those good old times when the preacher 
held forth continuously two, three, and four hours in a ser- 



2/8 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

mon. Less than a hundred years ago preachers of Scotch 
descent had the physical vigor and the gift of continuance 
to such a degree that they would keep up the discourse 
nearly all the day through. It is told of one who held on 
until the people could not stand it any longer, having even- 
ing duties on their farms to be performed before dark; their 
going out did not stop the flow of his discourse : but he was 
finally arrested by the sexton's boy, who came up into the 
pulpit with the keys and said, " Father wants you to lock up 
the church when you get through." 

Dr. Mairs was wont to preach until he was so much ex- 
hausted that it was well for him and his people that he gave 
out a psalm for them to sing, while he took to the open air, 
walked a few times around the church, and then resumed 
the desk, being greatly refreshed and ready for another 
hour's discourse. 

Better judgment obtains in the pulpit of our day. It is 
not, as many pretend, the decline of interest in the preaching 
of the word that has shortened the average discourse. The 
tone of piety and the love of Christians for the word of God 
and the ordinances of his house are quite as worthy of the 
church now as they were when the preacher boasted that he 
had preached three hours last Sabbath-day on a stretch. 

" But were you not worn out.'*" asked his friend. 

" No, not at all ; but it would have done you good to see 
how worried the people were." 

What the present age demands is not the result of dislike 
for the truth or distaste of God's word. It is an age of 
action rather than words ; an age when reading is so uni- 
versal and the principles of religious instruction so well un- 
derstood, that ministers are not called on to put a ten-vol- 
ume commentary into every sermon. Mr. John Crosby 
Brown said to the students of the Union Theological Semi- 
nary, " Take it for granted that your hearers know some- 
thing." And then he besought them not to be spending 
time and strength in drilling the congregation as if they were 
children in those elementary principles which they might 
fairly be supposed to understand. An old divine asked a 



SHORT, SHARP, AND DECISIVE. 279 

young preacher if he expected to write another sermon ? 
And the youth expressing surprise, the old man continued, 
" I thought you tried to put it all into this one sermon, and 
it would have been well to save something, if you expect to 
preach again." 

The age, every age, and every mind, learned or unlearned, 
want truth to be put tersely, pungently, and intelligibly. In 
tills respect there is no great difference between the people 
of one age and another. Antiquity furnishes no parallel to 
the long-drawn, exhaustive and exhausting orations that 
like wounded snakes dragged their slow lengths along in 
the wearisome mail-route trials not long ago at Washington. 
And it would not be wise to offer those live-day speeches as 
specimens of the taste and wants of the age. These are ex- 
traordinary, abnormal, unhealthy developments, and like the 
crimes they disclose, are an abomination in the ears of the 
people. Words, words, words, how vain they are when the 
mind is wide-awake to a knowledge of the truth! When a 
point has been made plain, every additional word is worse 
than lost upon an intelligent assembly. This is even more 
important to be remembered in public meetings where sev- 
eral speeches are to be heard, than in the pulpit, where the 
preacher has all the time to himself. Our large religious and 
philanthropic assemblies are often sadly abused by long- 
winded orators, who forget the rights of others and talk till 
the patience of the audience ceases to be a virtue. The late 
Dr. William Adams, a model of Christian courtesy, was so 
sensitive on this subject, that he would persistently excuse 
himself from speaking if previous orators had consumed the 
proper time for the meeting's continuance. Yet such an in- 
timation by one who was conspicuous for a nice sense of the 
fitness of things is not remembered by men who evidently 
love to hear themselves talk, and suppose that everybody 
else must be equally pleased. What is wanted to make an 
effective meeting is to have the speeches " short, sharp, and 
decisive." Each of those words has a distinct and pertinent 
meaning. A speech of ten minutes may have a beginning, 
middle, and end to it. Its brevity may be the wit, wisdom, 



280 IREN^US LETTERS. 

and power of it. It should be as sharp as a two-edged 
sword, the sharper the better, and especially at the point. 
It must be decisive, leaving no one in doubt as to the mean- 
ing and purpose of the speaker, making the argument clear 
and the conclusion necessary, intelligible, and undeniable. 
No one knows how much may be said in ten or fifteen min- 
utes until he gives his whole mind to the subject. The best 
sermon that has been preached since the world was made, 
did not fill up fifteen minutes. And all the best models of 
religious discourse in the history of the Saviour and his 
apostles are short, sharp, and decisive. Let Paul's sermon 
which lasted till midnight be considered an exception. He 
was going away the next day, and this was one of the occa- 
sions I have mentioned, when it was the desire of the hearers 
that the preacher should continue. Yet even in this great 
sermon behold what happened ! A young man sat in the 
window, there were many lights in the room, "and as Paul 
was long preaching the young man sunk down with sleep, 
fell from the third loft, and was taken up dead." Such acci- 
dents may not be feared where the audience are all in their 
safe and comfortable pews, and those who sleep in the ser- 
mon cannot fall out of the window. But the fact is left on 
record for our instruction on whom these ends of the world 
have come. And the moral is obvious, it is needless for me, 
dear brethren, to dwell upon it. 



SUNSHINE IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO. 

Some years ago, in the city of Florence, in Italy, I called 
at the studio of Manzuoli, an artist. He received me, a 
stranger, with a pleasant smile, and offered me a chair. I 
said to him : 

" I come from America, from the city of New York. A 
friend in that city desired me to find your studio and to ask 
you to make copies of several pictures of which here is a 
list. They are in the Pitti Palace," 



SUNSHINE IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO. 28 1 

He appeared to be much pleased and affected, for with his 
smiles his eyes were moistened, and he said : 

" This is the first ray of sunshine that has ever shone in 
my studio." 

Surprised by the remark I asked its meaning, and he an- 
swered : 

"The idea that my name has gone across the ocean to 
America, and that any one there has heard of me and my 
work so favorably as to send me an order, fills me with a 
new pleasure ; it is the first real satisfaction I have had in 
the pursuit of art." 

I found that he was a highly meritorious painter, and call- 
ing again and again I became interested in him and his work, 
bought several pictures, and on returning home to this coun- 
try sent to him orders given me by friends who saw his works 
and desired to have copies made of the great masterpieces in 
the old Italian galleries. 

Each year, at Christmas-time, a letter came to me from 
him full of grateful expressions, telling me of his prosperity, 
and wishing me health and happiness. One day I received 
a notice that a package by ship from Italy was waiting my 
order, and after it had passed the custom-house, and I had 
it home, it proved to be a large picture, in an elegant 
Florentine frame. The painting represented the sunlight 
coming through the leaves of a tree and on the head of a 
maiden sitting by a spring of water. A letter from Manzuoli 
came with the picture, saying, " The name of this painting is 
' Sunshine,' and I ask you to accept it from me as an emblem 
of the sunshine you have caused in my studio. May God 
bless you and all whom you love !" 

It hangs in the place of honor on my wall, as a rare and 
precious gem, a production not of the artist's genius only, 
but of his heart also. 

The last time I was in Florence I went to his studio and 
learned to my great sorrow that he was dead. But one who 
succeeded him, and had been with him some years, told me 
much of what he said of a friend of his in America. 

And the picture that he gave me speaks, now that he is 



282 IRENy^US LETTERS. 

dead, and preaches a beautiful lesson that may be usefully 
repeated. Not to go travelling and buying pictures to please 
artists ; not that, though there may be great pleasure and 
some profit in such service. Art has its uses, and may be 
made the source of joy and good. Next to the speaker and 
the author, and some will say before either, comes the man 
who has skill in the art of painting and sculpture, for the 
instruction and delight of mankind. If an order from over 
the ocean made bright sunlight in the artist's studio, how 
many walls has he made luminous by copies which his hand 
drew of the immortal works of Raphael and Titian ! 

It is great to have such power. God is great, and in his 
infinite greatness he causes his sun to shine upon the evil 
and the good. Jesus Christ is the Light of the world. To 
make sunsliine in the homes and the walks of the world is 
to be in some faint degree like Him who is the Giver of every 
good and perfect gift. And so we often envy the rich and 
the powerful among the sons of men who are able by open- 
ing the hand to scatter blessings all about them. The man 
of Uz rejoiced in that the blessings of those ready to perish 
came upon him, and he caused the widow's heart to sing for 
joy. He made sunshine in the abodes of darkness and gloom. 
But not the rich only, nor men of genius in letters and art 
only, not the kings and princes of men who have places and 
pensions and livings to bestow, not they only are " like gods" 
in their ability to make brighter the world in which we live. 
Were it so, this letter would not be written to yoji. The 
spirit of the message I send is in the blessed truth that the 
lowly and the weak, the humblest son or daughter of man 
who lives with others and walks with his fellows, may make 
sunshine in the dwelling he inhabits and along the life-path 
that he treads. 

The father or the mother of the family is endowed of God 
with this miraculous gift of healing the maladies that infest 
every house and heart where poor human nature works out 
its wayward way. Coming home from a day of toil, tired 
and a-hungered, he is cross and sour, or sullen and cold, and 
the house is darker for his coming. But if the better spirit 



SUNSHINE IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO. 283 

that is from above dwait in him, he would enter with the 
brightness of parental love on his manly brow, and words of 
cheer from a heart full of light would gladden the very walls- 
The mother, wearied and worried with household cares, frets 
and sulks and makes home intolerable, compelling the chil- 
dren to seek their pleasure elsewhere, and the father to prefer 
the tavern to his gloomy home. The wife and mother filled 
with the spirit that comes of God hides her cares, makes the 
best of everything, and her smiles and cheerful words illu- 
mine the house with the sunshine of heaven. It is a very 
small matter for an artist to paint a picture and give it to a 
friend ; it is a small work to write a song that sings itself 
around the world, giving joy to the sad, hope in despair, 
peace to the tossed and wounded soul, rest to the weary and 
heavy laden. When we were singing in church the hymn of 
my dear friend Ray Palmer, " My faith looks up to Thee," 
I said in my soul, " Oh that I could write one such song, and 
die." It is not given to me nor to many of the servants of 
God to scatter such pearls along the paths that human foot- 
steps tread; to set such suns or stars of light in the sky 
above us. But unto each and all of us it is given, in the 
sphere we inhabit, to make sunshine, to be sunshine, if it be 
our will and pleasure so to do and be. 

This is no ideal, sentimental talk. It is the practical com- 
mon-sense of the Christian life. You would think it a dread- 
ful sin to strike in anger a friend or a stranger, especially one 
of your own house. But let me in all seriousness tell you 
that the sullen silence, or the peevish word, the frown or the 
chill, may have in it quite as much sin to be answered for, 
as there would be in an ugly oath or a wicked blow. Out of 
the heart are the issues of life. Streams to make glad the 
home circle and society, giving water to thirsty souls in 
whom poverty or disease has dried up the springs of comfort 
and hope, may flow from the heart, or sullen, turbid waters 
that have no health in them, and poison all the herbs and 
flowers in their course. Therefore it is a high and a holy 
duty to be a light in the world. If you cannot be a sun at 
noon, be a star in the dark. If you cannot be a star, then, 



284 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

O friend, so live that men shall say of thee, " How far that 
little candle throws his beams ! So shines a good deed in a 
naughty world." 



TO DANNEMORA FOR TEN YEARS. 

New York has three State prisons. One is at Sing Sing, 
one is at Auburn, and the other is at Dannemora in the far 
north, where the climate is severe and the work if wholesome 
is hard. 

For a " gentleman" no one of these three is a very agree- 
able place. But it is sometimes the case that a man whose 
surroundings and associations are with gentlemen is found 
to be a villain, and is sent to meditate on the vicissitudes of 
life for a term of years in the walls of a State-prison. One 
of this sort is now in mind. 

He is the father of a lovely family, his wife weeps tears of 
anguish and shame, and his mother at the age of eighty is 
going into her grave with sorrow because of her ruined son. 
That is a picture of sin and misery to rend a heart of stone. 
And now I will tell you the story, and you will see the moral 
of it. He was in business in one of the many cities of this 
State, and having gained the confidence of the community, 
was freely trusted with the funds of others. These he used 
for his own purposes, and when they called for their own, he 
had them not. He then added forgery to his stealings, and 
when his crimes were discovered he fled, was brought back, 
confessed his guilt, and was sentenced to Dannemora for 
ten years. There he is now, and it is to be hoped that no in- 
judicious clemency or sentimental pity will avail to cheat 
justice and restore a bad man to society before his time. 

When he was before the court for sentence he was per- 
mitted to say what he wished in extenuation of his oflfence, 
and these are some of the remarkable words by which he 
hoped to deceive others ; he certainly did not delude himself. 
He knew their hollow mockery. 



TO DANNEMORA FOR TEN YEARS. 285 

" I am going to prison to make to the State such repara- 
tion as is called for by its laws, which I have so grievously 
broken and set at naught ; and yet, after all, broken and set 
at naught with no intention in my heart of injuring in per- 
son or purse one soul who had confided in me. The very 
fear of being thought dishonest may have the effect some- 
times to make a man seem to be, to be if you please, dishon- 
est. I dare stand before you and say, and call God to wit- 
ness the absolute truth of the saying, that all my trouble and 
distress and the trouble and distress that through me has 
come to others may be attributed to a tender heart, a wil- 
lingness to bear others' burdens, a disposition to believe in 
the honesty and honor of mankind, a bearing and forbear- 
ing with debtors to me, and not to one harbored dishonest 
thought or intent of my own heart or head." 

All this twaddle proceeds on the false assumption that a 
man is not a rogue when he uses the money of another with- 
out his consent, provided he intends to replace it. This is 
the miserable sham and delusion by which young and old 
rascals in various departments, in banks and treasuries all 
over the country, away in the South and the far West, in 
rural offices in New England and New York, everywhere in 
Europe and America, in Roman Catholic trusteeships and 
Protestant church societies, all alike, everywhere, men who 
enjoy the confidence of the public and of themselves, per- 
suade their own consciences to be quiet while they become 
robbers. Here is a widow now asking alms. She had just 
enough money in the hands of a friend to live on the inter- 
est which he paid her every quarter with commendable 
punctuality. When the explosion came, and he was blown 
up, it was discovered that he wanted money to go on with 
his speculations, conv.erted the bonds of the widow into cash, 
with a mental resolution to replace them with his gains. 
Now, this trustee in Dannemora told the court, and called 
God to witness, that " he never had a dishonest thought or 
intent of his heart or head." Which is itself a flagrant and 
monstrous mistake ! What constitutes stealing? Is it not 
taking the property of another without his consent .'' The in- 



286 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

tention to replace it does not modify the wickedness by the 
shadow of a shade. It was his intention to take—Xhal was 
the sin and shame : the intention to replace is another in- 
tention, certainly a good one, but it in no degree heals the 
first intention, which was a black and dastardly crime. If 
this could be driven into the mind of the young man, and of 
every man who has the handling or holding of money, per- 
haps we might save him from the fatal crime which involves 
him, and all who look to him for support, in untold misery 
and ruin. 

Mr. Purdy was an honest elder in the church of White 
Plains. He was treasurer also, and had the care of all col- 
lections made in the congregation. He kept the identical 
money, paper and coin from gold to copper, and to each object 
he paid over the very self-same money that he received. He 
was laughed at for his extreme particularity, but he adhered 
to his trust and was faithful in few things as a good steward. 
His way niaj' be putting too fine a point upon it, but it is bet- 
ter than carelessness, which is always the next door to crimi- 
nality. 

When a man has received money in trust, or is acting in 
any way for another, as an agent, or factor, cashier, or clerk, 
or manager, and resolves to take some of that money, or to 
borrow on some of those securities, in that moment he is a 
thief in heart, and when the deed is done he is ripe and rot- 
ten. He has cheated his conscience by the weak illusion of 
future restitution. But if that work of righteousness were 
ever done it would not blot out his transgression, or put him 
right in the sight of God. He stole his neighbor's goods. 
He was a thief. The world has invented the term defaulter 
to soften the ignominy of that strong Anglo-Saxon word 
thief, but there is no use in trying to dilute or disguise or 
cover up the intense meanness and wickedness of the man 
who takes advantage of his neighbor's confidence in him to 
do him a wrong. To say as this " gentleman" did, that he 
had no dishonest intention, is simply to use words as dis- 
honestly as he used the money of his friends. To say that 
he forged his neighbor's name to a note without any dis- 



TO DANNEMORA FOR TEN YEARS. 28/ 

honest intent is a mockery of language, and proves that the 
man is so deeply dyed in guilt and shame that he calls God 
to witness his innocence while he is dipping his hands into his 
neighbor's purse. 

Revelations in this city have recently been made of a state 
of corruption in places of business and official trust that may 
well alarm the honest citizen. And it is hardly possible to 
read a daily newspaper without learning that nearly the same 
state of things prevails, the land and world over. The con- 
science of men is in a state of sleep. Sin does not seem to 
be that odious and awful thing it is. The beauty of virtue is 
not attractive to the ordinary eye. Perhaps the voice of the 
prophet is not so loud and clear in warning the people as it 
was in other days. But it is true that crimes against prop- 
erty, breaches of trust, defalcations and frauds, are multiplied 
enormously, and public opinion does not visit the sinner 
when unmasked, with the righteous retribution his sin de- 
serves. Why, this "gentleman" continued the speech from 
which I have quoted by saying that he expects to return 
to his former place, and that "the people will respect and 
trust him as of old." Let him try to win and deserve their 
respect, and gain their confidence if he can. But let him 
never try to deceive them with his namby-pambyisms about 
good intentions and honesty of purpose. He might just 
as virtuously become a burglar or a highway robber to get 
money to feed the poor or build a church as to pledge securi- 
ties not his own for the sake of making more money so as to 
replace the securities and pocket a handsome balance. 

The love of money blinds the eyes of the soul. Daniel 
Lord, one of the great lawyers of the last generation in this 
city, told me that greed often destroys the moral faculty by 
which right is distinguished from wrong, and men supposed 
to be good are thus left to become dishonest, and land in 
prison before an asylum. It sometimes seems to me that 
financial vice is beyond remedy ; that men have all gone out 
of the way ; there is none that doeth good ; no, not one : but 
I will not believe it ; the right men are in the majority; they 
rule society ; they hold the billions of the world's money 



288 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

and render honest account thereof; while a few of the "gen- 
tlemen" now and then, who steal and intend to pay back 
their stealings, get ten years in Dannemora, where I wish 
they all were. 



INFLUENCE WITH RICH WIDOWS. 

Among the seventy private letters found on my desk on a 
recent return from the country were many of the same sort 
with the one from which is made the following extract : 

" We are struggling hard, and I am very sure that if Mrs. 

knew our circumstances she would send us the help 

we need. We know that you have much influence with good 
people in New York, and we write to you begging that you 
wiil use that influence in our behalf. It is only one of the 
crumbs that fall from the rich people's tables that we ask for. 
We have prayed for divine direction, and have no one but 
you to whom we can Jook." 

This letter has the same idea running through it, that per- 
vades the minds of thousands of Christ's dear people in all 
parts of the land. And so wide-spread is the thought, and 
so often and freely is it expressed, that I am sometimes 
tempted to think I am mistaken in supposing it to be a de- 
lusion and a snare. The idea seems to be that every needy 
object has a claim on the purse of every one who has a purse, 
and that it is my duty to be the medium of getting into it. 
I have near me letters in which allusion is made to five sev- 
eral and distinct ladies who have large wealth at their com- 
mand, as their husbands have gone to their inheritance 
among the saints in light, where the riches are eternal and 
their wants none at all. But the widows being left in charge 
of earthly treasures, it is claimed that they must be willing 
to build a school-house at the Horsetown cross-roads in Ken- 
tucky, or the Millerton Bar in Iowa, it being only necessary 
that I should use my influence with the widows to get them 
to draw a check for the money. 



INFLUENCE IVITH RICH WIDOWS. 289 

I want to put a check on those ideas. There is nothing 
more insane and injurious in the matter of Christian giving 
and doing than this predestinating the use of other people's 
money. Every judicious and intelligent person, having a 
disposition to give as the Lord hath prospered him, has a 
plan and purpose in what he does. The more he has to give, 
the less willing is he to give indiscriminately. Constantly 
beset behind and before, and often by those who are en- 
couraged with the hope that importunate begging will weary 
the widow into giving, these rich ladies must have a system 
in their benevolence, or they will soon cease to be able to be 
benevolent at all. Literally they would be stripped of their 
property, if they yielded to every well-indorsed call that is 
made upon them. Men and women often come personally 
to me with complaints that they cannot get admission to the 
private house of a rich Christian whose money they are after. 
They do not reflect upon the vast number of excellent men 
and women canvassing the city continually in quest of con- 
tributions for private or local objects one, two, or three thou- 
sand miles ofif — objects very important in themselves, but 
which have no conceivable claim on the charity of a man 
who is doing what he can for those objects with which he is 
intimately acquainted. To intrude on such givers is to punish 
them for giving. One noble deed incurs the penalty of being 
harassed by a hundred solicitors who press other objects. 
Hence many men insist, as a condition of giving, that their 
names shall not be mentioned. The happy agent who gets 
the subscription is so delighted with his success that he hur- 
ries to the New York Observer and says : " I have a great 

secret ; you must not say a word about it : Mr. has given 

me fifty thousand dollars for our cause." He manages to tell 
it in great confidence to about twenty men in the course of 

two hours, and the daily paper announces that "Mr. has 

given a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the cause of 

." To break the seal of confidence and to make the sum 

three times as large as it was, very naturally follows the gift, 
to the disgust of the giver, who resolves, perhaps, not to do 
so again. 

19 



290 IREN^US LETTERS. 

It is even so, and more so when ladies are the gracious 
givers. Their sex and their natural preference for retirement 
and for avoiding publicity suggest that it is better for them 
to do their good works so secretly that the one hand shall 
not know what the other does. Especially is it offensive to 
them, and to all other intelligent persons, that a man shall be 
employed as an agent to use his influence to get them to give 
money. It is humiliating to be an instrument for such a 
purpose. It is more humiliating to be the victim of such an 
instrument. Every one likes to be considered able to judge 
for himself in his own business, to measure his own duty in 
the light he has, and to enjoy that great fruit of the Protest- 
ant Reformation, the right of private judgment. His own 
conscience is to be his guide, and it is an insult to dictate to 
him by direct constraint or diplomatic negotiation. A lady 
unused to the arts and the boldness of practised seekers after 
donations naturally shrinks from their advances, and, it is 
said, probably with truth, that they are less accessible and 
more unyielding than men are. They are certainly less dis- 
posed than men to hear counsel employed to convince them 
of their duty, and they are quite as likely to give a solicitor 
a piece of their mind. 

Perhaps I have not yet made it plain that there are no rich 
widows with whom I have any influence whatever. There is 
not one in the world of whom I have ever asked a contribu- 
tion for any object to my knowledge. There was a rich 
maiden lady in this city to whom I wrote asking for a dona- 
tion in aid of a widow, and she sent me a sum so large that 
I was taken all aback, and wrote her a note of immense 
thanks ; and what do you think she did ? She sent me an- 
other donation for the same object just as large as the first ! 
But she was not a widow, and she is now where they never 
marry. And so there is no one left to whom I can go with 
any of these many applications. It is of no use to send them 
to me. I could not go with them, and would not if I could. 
It is not in good taste. And it is better for us all to do with 
our own what we can, remembering that it is required of 
each according to what he hath. 



A SOCIETY OF YOUNG THIEVES. 29 1 



A SOCIETY OF YOUNG THIEVES. 

A CURIOUS discovery of a secret society was made in this 
city last week. It was composed of clerks in retail grocery 
stores, who were pledged to steal from their employers one 
hundred and twenty-five dollars apiece each month. The 
sum was paid over to the treasurer of the society and di- 
vided among the members according to certain rules. Some- 
times an amount equal to $2500 was given to any one who 
was going into business for himself. This society has been 
in existence less than a year, and after leading to the failure 
of one or two firms, suspicion was excited which led to dis- 
covery. The confession of some of these rascals may be fol- 
lowed by the conviction of all of them. This is their ruin in 
all probability. They have made shipwreck of character be- 
fore they are twenty-one years of age. 

There are conditions of life in which children grow up to 
be thieves. Such are their surroundings, scarcely anything 
else can be expected. But when boys have attained to such 
an age as to become clerks in stores, and have had education 
and training to justify a tradesman in intrusting them with 
goods and money in a store, it seems at first view incredible 
that an organized fraternity could exist among them for the 
express purpose of robbing their employers. And what a 
degree of depravity it discloses : far more base than the bur- 
glar or highway robber. This stealing involves a meanness 
and ingratitude which are not among the peculiar sins of one 
who breaks into a rich man's house or knocks him down in 
the street. To betray a trust, to steal from one's parent or 
employer, taking advantage of confidence reposed, is a crime 
of such baseness as to incur contempt as well as indignation. 
It is smiting the hand that feeds: a serpent stinging the 
bosom that warms it into life. 

I am told, and recent revelations justify the statement, that 
every department of business and trade, especially of public 
business where money is handled, is more or less filled with 



292 JRENyEUS LETTERS. 

iagents who in one way or another manage to get more than 
their wages. In other words, many of them are thieves. It 
is very hard to prove it on any one in particular. The 
ingenuity of lawyers and detectives is taxed to the utmost to 
find out who has been stealing hundreds of thousands of 
dollars from the city during a long series of years. It is go- 
ing on at this moment in all human probability. A society 
of young thieves, perhaps of old thieves, may be in existence, 
perhaps has existed many years, in which the members play 
into one another's hands, cover up tracks, and render detec- 
tion almost impossible. There must be some secret affinity 
between rogues which helps them to know each other at first 
sight, so that they can trust one another with the fearful 
secret of their guilt. There is little honor among thieves — 
they know this very well, and hence must be careful how 
they put themselves into the power of one who may betray 
them at the first moment of danger, or on the first awaken- 
ing of conscience. So they are hedged about with difficul- 
ties and beset with foes within and without. 

The usual excuse made for the members of this society of 
young thieves is that their wages are so low that they are 
tempted to steal. This, of course, is no justification of their 
crime. But it is worthy of the careful attention of employ- 
ers. To oppress a laborer is as great a sin as to steal, and it 
may be that employers who give "starvation" wages are re- 
sponsible in part for the sins of those who are driven by 
stress of circumstances to help themselves to money which is 
not theirs. Yet it is not probable that one in ten thousand 
of the host of thieves, peculators in stores and offices, steals 
to get bread. They steal that they may consume it on their 
lusts. The young man who earns only enough to get food 
and raiment may, by strict attention to business, making 
himself indispensable to his employer, secure before long an 
increase of pay. But if he spends a few cents a day for some 
useless indulgence, if he treats himself and a friend to enter- 
tainments in the evening, if he joins with otliers in frolics 
which cost only a little money at a time, he very readily 
consumes a large part of his scant income, increases his 



A SOCIETY OF YOUNG THIEVES. 293 

longing for more, weakens his moral principle, parleys with 
temptation, and joins a society of young thieves, or becomes 
a thief on his own hook. The way to ruin is very smooth, 
and down-hill always. It is full of travellers. And to stop 
while going down-hill is hard. 

Is there no balm in Gilead .'* No remedy for this state of 
things.'' Well, I would say, in the first place, there always 
was a similar state of things — not so bad perhaps as just now. 
But pickings and stealings always were the prey of those who 
are intrusted with other people's goods. In many a store 
a clerk learns to steal by seeing that his employer cheats his 
customer. If the boy-clerk is taught to adulterate the 
goods, to mix poor flour with good, it is not strange that he 
learns to cheat and steal for himself. It was an old libel on 
pious tradesmen, which has been often repeated : The grocer 
calls to his clerk, " Have you sanded the sugar.''" "Yes." 
" Have you watered the rum }" " Yes." " Well then, come 
in to prayers." This is designed to insinuate that the grocer 
is a great hypocrite. And there are thousands on thousands 
of honest tradesmen whose shops and stores are schools of 
the virtues, where young men are taught by a goodly example 
that to be just, upright, and true in trade is lovely in the 
sight of God and yields the fruit of righteousness in the life. 
And we know that the tricks of the trade are also such in 
many and many a shop or store, that the clerk is a pupil in 
a school of vice, trained to cheat and lie, and of course learns 
to steal. I would like to know how many of the employers 
of these dishonest clerks are themselves honest ? In which 
of the stores is no advantage taken of the ignorance of a 
customer? Which one sells only at a fair profit.? Never 
deceives in regard to the name or quality of the tea or coffee 
sold ? Now the sin of the employer is no excuse for the sin 
of the clerk, but the sin of the one prepares for the sin of 
the other. The teacher was first in transgression : the latter 
readily followed the bad example. 

Let the young man also learn this lesson : it was put in 
writing some thousands of years ago, and has been proved 
to be true in millions of instances since : It is written in the 



294 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

proverbs of the wisest of men in these words, " Though hand 
join in hand, the wiclced shall not be unpunished." And it 
often happens that the joining hand in hand, forming a so- 
ciety, hastens the discovery and punishment. Bad people 
are not to be trusted. Conspirators are often traitors. And 
no evil secret is safe. Even murder cries out of the ground. 
There is no place on or under the earth where you can hide 
a sin and be sure of its staying hid. It is known to two per- 
sons the moment it is done. Darkness and light are both 
alike to Him whose all-seeing eye is on you. And that mys- 
tei-ious inmate of your bosom, called Conscience, sits there to 
accuse and condemn. God is working all the while to bring 
you to repentance, and Conscience commands you to confess 
and restore. Thus the two fearful witnesses of your sin are 
against you, and will infallibly bring you to punishment. In 
vain you run away. You carry your judge and executioner 
with you : and as you run I hear you cry, " Which way I fly 
is hell ; m)''self am hell." 

"Run, speak to that young man," is an ancient direction. 
I am trying to obey it. Would to God that young men 
everywhere would hear and heed. 



CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

As I was approaching a church where I was to worship 
that day, I met a troop of children going away from it. 
Wondering why they were leaving before the service was 
commenced, I asked the meaning, The explanation was a 
sad one. 

" The Sabbath-school begins at half-past nine and closes 
just before the time for the church service, and this is the 
Sunday-school going home !" 

" Going home !" I exclaimed ; " the children of the Sunday- 
school going away from the church !" 

" Oh yes, the Sunday-school is the children's church : they 
do not want any other." 



CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 295 

Pursuing the inquiry, I learned the habit of the children 
to be this : If the school is held after the service, the children 
stay away from church and come to the school ; if it is held 
in the morning, they attend the school and run away from 
church. This is the practice Jn the cities. 

Probably no such evil prevails in the country, where the 
church and the school are held in such connection that 
parents and children may enjoy both. But the subject is 
one that demands vigorous and judicious treatment. The 
life and soul of the church and school are involved in this 
question. Doubtless the primary idea of the Sunday-school 
was to teach the young who are outside of the ordinary 
means of grace : in the highways and hedges, and not in the 
Christian houses, the abodes of virtue, piety, and intelligence. 
These schools for the ignorant and neglected were so useful 
they were established for children of the church also, and 
proved to be greatly useful for them, as well as for the others. 

When they became so popular that parents neglected the 
duty of teaching their children at home, and the Sunday- 
school teacher was substituted for the mother in giving Bible 
instruction, the evil was obvious, yet very difficult of cure. 
The Sunday-school is better than the teaching children 
would get from thousands of mothers. The balance is 
largely in favor of the Sunday-school. But the parent who 
dispenses with the thorough instruction of his children at 
home, because a teacher in the school will put questions to 
them from a series of Bible lessons, is doing a sad wrong to 
those for whom he is responsible. The home is above the 
church in this regard. The father is prophet, priest, and 
king in the religious order of his house — the patriarch who 
must be faithful to his trust, and see to it that his household 
walk in the way of the Lord. The children should attend 
Sunday-school also, for the sake of others even more than for 
their own sake. But the highest of their privileges and the 
richest of their blessings is the church in the house. The 
Sabbath is not long enough for the many services that some 
of our friends try to crowd into it. It becomes to many a 
day of dissipation ; to others of weariness. It ought to be a 



296 IREN^US LETTERS. 

day of rest and refreshment to body and soul. It is some, 
thing far different to the young woman who goes to church 
three times, to Sunday-school twice, and to prayer-meeting 
once. Such excess of religious exercise is inconsistent with 
the design of the Sabbath, a weariness of the flesh that is not 
an acceptable sacrifice. 

So with the children. It is even more important that re- 
ligious exercises should not be made irksome and burden- 
some to them. Too much of a good thing is bad for them. 
I would not require them to be all the livelong day in a 
treadmill of religious work. They will be disgusted, and hate 
the service which should be always attractive to them and a 
delight. It is a serious question with ministers how to make 
the pulpit useful and pleasant to the young. Preachers with 
a gift for talking to children — a gift not so rare as is often 
thought — sometimes give a brief discour.se to the children 
before the regular sermon. The objection to that practice 
is that children take it as their portion and dismiss the ser- 
mon that follows from their attention altogether. Now, the 
art of talking to children does not consist in baby-talk, or 
little stories, or poor jokes. A man need not be a mounte- 
bank, in order to interest the young in what he is saying. 
Children are not fools. If a man is simple in his words and 
earnest in his manner, children will hear with attention, and 
get instruction from a sermon that is designed for the whole 
people. And the wisest and best of the congregation will be 
more interested in a discourse that the children understand, 
than in profoundly abstruse dissertations which darken truth 
instead of making wise the simple. 

Children should be educated in and into the church. 
Whatever our theory may be of the spiritual relation of the 
child to the church, this is certain and true, that children 
should be consecrated to God from their birth. Of such is 
the kingdom of heaven. We should assume this as the nor- 
mal state of the case, and treat the child accordingly. He 
should be trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
His first intelligent lesson should be of God and worship. 
The happiest hours of child-life should be in learning of the 



CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 297 

way to God through Jesus Christ. And so sweetly adapted 
is tlie child-mind to the gospel and the gospel to the child- 
mind, that they cheerfully coalesce, and the babe's rtiilk is 
not more palatable and nutritious than is the bread of life to 
the new-born soul. No one can say how soon a child may 
intelligently apprehend divine truth. Many saints of God 
have no memory of the period in their early lives when Christ 
was not dear to their hearts. When they were born from 
above they do not remember any more than they can recol- 
lect the moment when they first breathed the breath of life. 
It is not so with all : perhaps not so with the most. But the 
true theory of the gospel is that children should be brought 
up on it, as their daily food, be nurtured by it : renewed by 
the Holy Spirit and made heirs of salvation. Parental 
fidelity in the judicious use of the means of grace will be fol- 
lowed by these results. We ought to expect them while we 
labor and pray for them, 

I have thought this to be a fitting subject, at this Christ- 
mas and holiday season of the year. It is the time for festal 
enjoyment, and the hearts of parents are turned to the chil- 
dren. In their joy and gladness, parents are glad. Religion 
never was designed to make our pleasures less, and it never 
does. It brightens and sweetens every innocent delight. 
The old word merry has lost much of its ancient beauty, 
but it is a good, sound word for cheerful pleasures. Even an 
apostle would have the merry to sing psalms. And he would 
himself have found enjoyment in the frolics of childhood, 
the amusements of Christmas-time, and the salutations of the 
New Year. Thus he would make pure religion consistent 
with the charm of social and domestic life, embellishing the 
refinements and cheering the festivities of the happiest cir- 
cles. Children thus taught will not be apt to seek their 
pleasure in the ways of the wicked. Virtue and happiness 
have to them the same meaning, as if the principle were true 
that to be good is to be happy. And thus I would work out 
my theory of children and the church. The church should 
begin in the house. The children should be carefully trained 
in the love and fear of God and his Son Jesus Christ. Thg 



298 IREN^US LETTERS. 

pleasure of his service and the evil of sin should be im- 
pressed on their infant minds. And by all the arts of pa- 
rental care they should be won for Christ while yet they find 
a mother's knee the sweetest school. This, I believe, is the 
privilege of every Christian household, and may God in In- 
finite goodness grant it may be yours. 



THE WINTER HOLIDAYS. 

If one indulges so freely over-night in what he calls plea- 
sure as to have aches and pains all the next day and some 
days afterwards, he pays too dear for the whistle. But there 
is not much danger of excess in the enjoyment of Christmas, 
New Year's, and the intervening days. At least, this is true 
of those families into which these letters are supposed to go. 

There is a vast amount of indulgence that is not innocent 
among the high and the low, the rich and the poor: excess 
in eating and drinking, in senseless dissipation, late hours and 
risks of health, all of which are followed by painful reaction 
and positive distress. But this is not the case among the 
sober, respectable, and steady-going people whose society we 
most affect. Probably no people in the world have a more 
just and intelligent appreciation of what these winter holi- 
days ought to be, than we have in city and country here in 
these happy and united States. The holidays are chiefly a 
series and season of domestic and social festivities. If we 
are favored with good sleighing, as in the North we often 
are, the out-of-door enjoyment is intensified a hundred-fold. 

Up in the country where my young life was passed it was 
common for the young folks to have their sleigh-rides, and 
the married people to have their parties for the same amuse- 
ment. Sometimes forty or fifty couples would turn out with 
sleighs each holding eight or ten, each sleigh with four horses 
covered with jingling bells ; the company well supplied with 
bufTalo-robes and foot-warmers, and setting off in the middle 
of the day so as to make a display that could be seen, they 



THE WINTER HOLIDAYS. 299 

would ride twenty miles or more to a tavern previously en- 
gaged, and there have a party, a supper and, if the most of 
them were so disposed, a dance, and then return in the small 
hours of the morning. City people suppose it must be 
dreadfully dull and dreary in the country in winter-time. 
Far from it. If the sleighing is good, there is a constant 
interchange of social visits, a round of parties, that are quite 
as enjoyable as the gorgeous entertainments of the city on 
which hundreds and thousands of dollars are lavished. Win- 
ter in the country is the time also for religious life and work ; 
when the labors of the farm are interrupted, and it is easy to 
have meetings for prayer and preaching. These are pleas- 
ures. A right-minded Christian finds more enjoyment in 
such assemblies than in any others, though it is very hard 
to persuade a man or woman of the world to believe it. The 
literature of the day has done its worst to make religion a 
brother of gloom. And now there are few outside of the 
church who believe that the highest sort of social pleasure is 
found in the contact and communion of Christian minds and 
hearts. But so it is, and nowhere is it more observable than 
in the country and the holidays. 

We are always overdoing matters. That is our national 
foible. We cannot take things moderately. And this trait 
of ours has its illustration in the excess to which we carry 
the beautiful custom of holiday gifts. The good old practice 
of filling the children's stockings with toys and pretty little 
gifts of fruits and sweets has grown into a custom of making, 
expecting, and getting presents, that has become a burden if 
not a plague. Where five or ten dollars, or even less, suf- 
ficed to make the little ones happy, and to keep up the prac- 
tice of the Christmas-tree, or the more quiet distribution 
before breakfast on the morning of Christmas or New Year's, 
it has come to pass that every one in the house, and the kin- 
dred to the farthest remove, on both sides, must be remem- 
bered. Nor will a trifling token of kind regard suffice. It 
must be a substantial gift, with some considerable money- 
value, or even the children do not feel any gratification on 
receiving it. This custom lays a heavy tax on many who. 



300 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

feel it sensibly, because they can ill aflford to throw away so 
much money. In the family-circle it is not unusual for each 
one to designate the things most needed or desired, and then 
the others can arrange among themselves who shall make 
the present. They can do this singly, or making up a purse 
give it in common. The custom of making presents to those 
around us, to parents and children, brothers and sisters, and 
to servants whose faithfulness has entitled them to our es- 
teem, is a good custom, and should not run into such extra- 
vagance as to make it a nuisance. 

But let us beware of doing or saying anything that shall 
discourage the domestic and social pleasures of the winter 
holidays. They are for the most part such festivities as tend 
to strengthen the family bond, which is the security of the 
Church and the State. Whatever makes home-life attrac- 
tive is a positive good. The children who are away at school 
come home at such time to the frolic and feast in the father's 
house, and return to their studies after the play is over, with 
their hearts all aglow with filial and fraternal love. He is a 
very bad boy and she is a very sad girl who does not prize a 
holiday at home as the chief joy of youth. So I would hope 
that every returning season of such pleasure would be a new 
bond of affection around the children's hearts, holding them 
to the old roof-tree, and to the ways of pleasantness and the 
paths of peace. They will have cares enough and troubles 
and bitter pains by and by. The days are coming when they 
will say, " I have no pleasure in them." Therefore, let them 
have as much of the innocent play of childhood and youth 
as they can. The devil is on the lookout for them, and is 
laying snares for their little feet. Let us watch them lest 
they stray away from us in search of forbidden fruit, and so 
fall into the traps of the evil one. 

When these Christmas holidays come and go, and then 
return with these revolving years, I ask myself, as I have for 
more than half a century, is the world growing better } Is it 
feeling more widely and deeply the true meaning of that 
mission of peace and good-will which the Christ came to 
fulfil .? His birthday is celebrated with thanksgiving from 



THE WINTER HOLIDAYS. 30I 

the rising to the setting sun, and there is not a kingdom or 
people where His name is known that is not the better off 
because the Son of God became man. But do men love one 
another more than they did fifty years ago? I think they 
do. The brotherhood of the human race is more general. 
Benevolence is wider and deeper. Giving is ten times more 
common and more generous than it was. The proper use of 
money is far better understood and practised. The gradual 
improvement in the condition of the poor; the increase of 
hospitals and asylums and homes for the sick, the aged, and 
the destitute ; the vastly augmented revenues of institutions 
for the diffusion of knowledge and religion in the earth — are 
directly in proof of the fact that the life and death of Christ 
are more and more extending their benign and saving power 
over mankind. 

There are writers and orators who reckon this progress as 
the fruit of science and philosophy. I read in this evening's 
newspaper that a speculator in San Francisco had purchased 
the whole sugar crop in the Sandwich Islands, some forty or 
fifty thousand tons. Neither science nor philosophy has had 
much to do in making the Cannibal Isles a sugar-growing 
country. The gospel of Christ did it. And as the Christ- 
mas song of peace and good-will goes singing itself around 
the world, men give the good gifts of science and philosophy 
and the arts of peace to peoples long enslaved by ignorance 
and sin ; the wilderness blossoms and the fields made fat 
with the blood of war bring forth the harvests of civilization 
and commerce to the praise of Him who shall one day be 
Lord of all. 

When something far off is said to be coming we say "so is 
Christmas." It is sure to come, though weeks and months 
intervene. So we are sure this good time is drawing nigh. 
We may have it now within us ; and we may make it here 
and now all around us. Christmas in the house and the 
neighborhood ; giving good gifts to men, to the poor, to 
the weary and the heavy laden ; to every one according as 
he hath need, even as Christ also ministered unto us. This 
is the millennium dawning on our hearts, dispelling the dark- 



302 IREN^US LETTERS. 

ness, lifting off burdens, and making the wounded spirit sing 
for joy. The bards of all ages have sung its coming. We 
are living in the morning of its advent, and may, if we will, 
have a hand in ushering in its noonday reign. 



THE ERROR OF A MOMENT 

MAKES THE SORROW OF A LIFE. 

Many an example of this great truth has been seen since 
the error of Esau. His story has been on the pages of sa- 
cred scripture through these long thousands of years for the 
warning and instruction of mankind, but young men and 
young women who have read it from their childhood and 
have often said, " What a great fool Esau was !" turn out to 
be as great fools as he, and all the rest of their days lament 
that the error of a moment made the sorrow of a life. 

I read the other day the very sensible remark, that in the 
most serious and important matter, one that involves more 
intimately and completely than any other the happiness or 
misery of a lifetime, young people exercise the least judg- 
ment, and act with the greatest possible precipitation. That 
is, in the matter of marriage ! It is quite likely that most 
men take far less pains to be sure they are right before de- 
ciding the question of a wife, than they would if they were 
buying a house for her to live in. And many a young 
woman answers the question that fixes her state for life with 
less reflection than she gives to the choice of a dress or a 
bonnet. These matters of the heart are, with the young, 
determined intentionally without the cool exercise of the fac- 
ulty of reason, the highest of human endowments, and which 
has no nobler and better opportunity for its employment than 
in coming to a wise decision as to the choice or acceptance 
of a companion for life. Yes, it is an affair of the heart, and 
if the heart is not in it, all other things go for nothing. Call 
it a love affair. Let it be a love affair. And if you cannot 
make it a love affair, by all means give it up. For be assured 



THE ERROR OF A MOMEJ^T. 303 

of this, if the heart is not in it, the whole heart, all the 
strong and tender passions that help to make up the world 
of human affection such as every true man or true woman 
lavishes on the partner of life's joys and pains, if the whole 
heart is not in it, it were better to hang a millstone around 
the neck of that contemplated union and drown it forever in 
the depth of the sea, than to make it a reality. The error of 
the moment that completes the engagement with no heart 
in it, becomes the sorrow of a life. The twofold nature of 
every human soul is made up of reason and emotion : both 
are inseparable from the being. They ought to be equal in 
power. Nobody is complete without both in lively exercise: 
in some natures one is in excess, and in other natures the 
other; one is more frequently dominant in man, the other 
in woman. If both have not their highest and intensest de- 
velopment in the decision of this question, then all the fu- 
ture is the result of blind chance, or, what is better, the 
mercy of Providence, that is far better to us than our deserts. 
But as this question is often decided in the immaturity of 
the mind, in the veal time of life, when even love itself is 
sometimes profanely called calf-love, before either of the 
little couple of people know what their minds are, if 
they have anything fit to be called mind, before they know 
what they are going to be and do, and therefore before they 
know what they want, stumbling into a passion that sets 
judgment aside as an impertinence, and being governed 
solely by an impulse which is as fickle and transient as it is 
sudden and silly, they fall into an error that makes the sor- 
row of a lifetime. 

I do not care to consider the vexed question of the com- 
parative number of happy and unhappy marriages. In the 
church and in those circles of society by whom we are sur- 
rounded there are doubtless hundreds of happy households 
to one where the married state is long-drawn-out misery. 
But the records in the daily newspapers of separations, 
fights, murders, flights, divorces, that project themselves up- 
on the public horizon so that they smell to heaven in their 
wickedness and shock humanity by their wretchedness, are 



304 IREN^US LETTERS. ^ 

so many, so tragical, and deplorable as to prove beyond all 
denial or doubt that these marriages were made unwisely, 
and the error is punished with sorrow that no tongue can 
tell and no imagination conceive. 

And underneath the surface of fair society, smooth and 
pure to the eye of the world, how many fearful tragedies are 
performed ! A husband converted by wine into a fiend, and 
a wife with unconquered temper turned from a ministering 
angel into a fury ; homes with skeletons in every closet, and 
walls echoing forever the sighs of crushed affections and 
blighted hopes. Over these the pall is thrown to hide them 
from the sight of men. 

Now, I abhor the advice of that cynical London news- 
paper which says to young people about to marry. Don't. 
The satire it implies is undeserved and despicable. To all 
young people who have the means of being comfortable in 
the married state I say. Do it. It is the ordinance of nature, 
the voice of God, who sets the solitary in families, and who 
will bless the basket and the store of them who walk in the 
way of His commandments. Get married, by all means. 
But if your reason and emotions both are not in it, then, 
with Punch, I say Don't. 

The wisest of men, under the inspiration of the Almighty, 
said: "With good advice make war," and I say with good 
advice make love. And in this I think I have the mind of 
the spirit. 

When I took my pen in hand to write this epistle it was 
not even in the thought of my heart to speak of mistakes in 
marriage as one of the examples of those errors that beget 
life-long sorrows. My eye was fixed on the young man who, 
in an evil hour, was tempted by his friend to go into a saloon 
where the wine and then the game allured him to drink and 
to gamble ; and in one moment of folly and madness he 
threw away his birthright of virtue, and like Esau forfeited 
immortal hopes. I was thinking of another youth who put 
his hand into the treasury of his employer and stole a little 
money that he might indulge himself in pleasurable sin. 
From that moment he saw a thief whenever he looked into 



THE ERROR OF A MOMENT. 305 

a mirror. It blazed right out on his forehead, and it seemed 
to him the world must know he was a villain. Self-respect 
was gone, and so was honor and honesty and enjoyment. 
That error of a moment was the sorrow of his life. I was 
thinking of the young woman of whom we all read in the 
daily papers last week, "the foolish virgin," who, in a mo- 
ment of unspeakable folly, mistaking hot passion for love, 
and trusting to the seductive words of a scoundrel in the 
garb of a lover, flung away the joys of parental affection, the 
wealth of brother and sister's hearts, and all the sweet en- 
dearments of fireside and home, and alas ! made wreck of 
body and of soul. Thousands of such poor, lost creatures are 
weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth in the anguish 
of remorse, because of the error of one moment ! 

Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they 
would consider the end ! At first it is sweet, but in the end it 
biteth like a serpent andstingeth like an adder. One blunder, 
one mistake, one error, one sin, makes the sorrow of a life. 
It is a little sin — what does God care for that ? Is it not too tiny 
for the Infinite to notice ? It is a mere speck on the surface 
of the character. Yes, but it is sin, and the waters of all the 
oceans cannot wash it away. You will weep over it, but it 
is beyond the reach, though you weep bitterly, of tears. It 
is to be the sorrow of a life ; God grant it may not be the 
sorrow of eternity ! 

To err is human. But there is One who sticketh closer 
than a brother. One whose arm is about you in the time of 
temptation. You feel it as you struggle to get away to do 
what you know is wrong. It is against that love you go in 
the first step of the downward way. Trust Him, cling to 
Him, Hold him closely to the heart. So Joseph did. 
" How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God ? " 
So you will stand. Temptation will not be your destroyer. 
And the triumph of that moment shall be the joy of a life, 
and immortal glory its great reward. 
20 



306 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 



A RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS. 

When the greatest of letter-writers said in his second 
Epistle to the Philippians, " I have learned, in whatsoever 
state I am, therewith to be content," he showed himself to 
be about as near human perfection as men or women come 
in this trying world. With him that state of mind was not 
consistent with laziness or indisposition to make higher and 
still higher attainments in the religious life. Forgetting the 
things that are behind, he was pressing onward and upward. 
Not as though he " had already attained or was perfect," but 
reaching forth unto those things which are before. And he 
adds, "Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded." 
Still he knew how to abound and how to want worldly goods, 
and it was of this he was speaking when he said that he had 
learned to be content, whatever was his state. 

Here is the secret of far more than half the happiness and 
misery of this present evil world. It is almost universally 
believed that enjoyment consists in, or is to be had only 
with prosperity. Hence the poor count the rich happy. 
Hence it is that few think it possible for them to take real 
clear comfort, till they attain more wealth than they have 
now. It is always more, and they never say it is enough, and 
therefore are not content. It is quite likely that far more 
happiness is found and permanently enjoyed in homes where 
virtue, peace, industry, and the fruits of daily labor are daily 
found, than in kings' palaces or the mansions of the wealthy. 
It was Infinite wisdom and benevolence that set the world in 
families, and so arranged the lot of mankind, this inequality 
of condition and variety of pursuit, that one should supple- 
ment the other, and each should contribute to the good of 
the whole. This competition in business is wholesome. In- 
dustry is excited by the success of those who have gone 
ahead. In a race all run, but one wins the prize. 

We have not yet begun to learn one of the greatest and 
best lessons of life, that happiness does not depend on sur- 
rounding circumstances. These may be altogether favorable. 



A RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS. 307 

while the envious disposition, the complaining spirit, the 
carking care, may fill the gilded apartment and downy beds 
and loaded tables with exceeding great misery. Wliile, on 
the other hand, a modest home, where love and peace abound, 
may be a paradise without a serpent in it, though there is no 
money there except what honest industry wins. This is 
God's wise and kind arrangement. It is his will that all 
men and women shall be happy, and none of them fail of it 
but through their own neglect or abuse of the means he 
gives them. All the schemes of human invention to pervert 
the divine economy, and to reform society, are rebellions 
against the will and wisdom of God. Notably is this true of 
the " woman's rights" crusade, and the war on property under 
the plea that all things belong alike to all. The mutual rela- 
tions of men and women, as constituted of God in nature 
and illustrated in the wide experience of ages, are so ordained 
as to yield the greatest possible amount of happiness to them 
who have learned, in whatever state they_ are, therewith to 
be content. Love rules the world. God is love. And love 
is the house-band, the husband, the father, the wife, the 
mother — all words that in their very nature are saturated 
with love. It is greater than all other graces, because it is 
the sire of them all. And He who made families and defined 
the position of each member of the cabinet in that first and 
most important government in the world, made love the 
ruling, regulating, and glorifying principle in its administra- 
tion. To upset such a government, to proclaim it tyrannical, 
oppressive and to be subverted, is an offence against Him 
who is the Father of us all. But the wide diffusion of these 
treasonable ideas about the rights and wrongs of women 
has instigated thousands of little domestic feuds and filled 
the courts and newspapers with tales of scandal and suits for 
divorce. The divine plan is always the best plan ; and if the 
noisy reformer would study to know what is the mind and 
will of God, he would be a wiser and better man, and per- 
haps would turn his feeble mind to some useful exercise. 

It is on this same truthful basis we stand when holding to 
the principle that the gospel has the only possible solution 



308 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

of the wage-and-labor problem. Employers must learn from 
the Bible to give to their helpers what is " just and equal," 
what is right and due to them in their situation. And the 
laborer who receives must be content with the reward that 
his labor fairly earns. There is a conflict of opinion here 
that arithmetic, political economy, arbitration, or human law 
will never adjust. One party seeks to get the most for the 
least, and the other wants just the same. There is but one 
rule to govern the parties, and that is peculiarly appropriately 
called the golden. Apply and employ that brief sentiment 
and the quarrel comes to an end. 

Deeper down into the heart of human suffering does this 
principle go when we try to solve the problem of poverty. 
It is very hard to be very poor. And to preach the gospel of 
contentment to the hungry and the freezing is as if we were 
telling the drowning in the swelling of the Ohio to be con- 
tented in their under-water homes. And there are greater 
sufferers in the depths of a great city than in the Western 
floods. Where ghastly poverty and awful vice breed in secret, 
a progeny of misery grows or dies in filth, disease, and woe 
unspeakable. Shall we tell these children of despair to be 
content with such things as they have? No; but tell them 
what you will, there is little hope for them, only a very little 
hope. But we may tell them, as the rich man wanted his 
friends to be told, that this hell of torment comes of disobe- 
dience, and our words of warning may save some from com- 
ing to that place. " Godliness with contentment is great 
gain." But you must have godliness. Charity that goes 
into the realms of wretchedness without the principles of 
God's sociology, only alleviates while the sore festers and 
rots and the patient perishes twice. There is a science of 
social life which teaches that industry and virtue are the 
parents of prosperity, and laziness and vice go hand in hand 
to the prison and poor-house. The honest m.an contented 
with his lot sits not down to count his money and see how 
long he can live without work, but under the pressure of a 
virtuous mind and inspired by faith and hope, he makes use 
of the means and opportunities which God provides. Add- 



WETTING THE ROPES. 309 

ing daily to his modest store, restricting his wants to his 
abilities, he goes from strength to strength. Discontent, 
fretfulness, repining, are vices of which he is innocent. He 
has more real enjoyment in being what he is and doing what 
he does, than any rich man whose cares to keep often disturb 
his nerves. Thus the poor man is happier than he perhaps 
will be when he is rich. One of my friends being greatly 
prospered in business removed from his modest down-town 
side-street house to a palace on the Avenue. In reply to my 
inquiry he said he enjoyed himself far more before he moved. 
"There I was perfectly comfortable ; now I keep a servants' 
boarding-house." 

It was much harder to be content in splendid luxury than 
in modest comfort. And the conclusion of this dull dis- 
course is that the heart and mind are the seat of pleasure or 
of pain, and externals count very little in the sum of enjoy- 
ment. Be thankful for everything and rejoice always. 



WETTING THE ROPES. 

Last week was mentioned the decease at Newark, N. J., of 
the Hon. Beach VanderpooL* The power of association is 
great and peculiar, and the sight of his name recalled an in- 
cident of interest in itself, and its recital will be useful. 

Mr. Vanderpool was the young and worthy Mayor of that 
city in the year 1846. At that time, as now, several profes- 
sional men having their avocations in New York City had 
their private residences at Newark, for the sake of economy, 
coming out of and into this city every day. We paid about 
$75 a year for our commutation fare on the railroad, and 
could get a better house for $200 than we could for $1200 in 
New York. 

One morning as usual the Rev. Drs. Charles Hall and J. H. 
Agnew were riding to town with me, and the importance of 

* Died March 12, 1884. 



3IO IREN^US LETTERS. 

a public library in Newark was the topic of conversation. 
We proposed to put our private collections of books into 
one, and form the nucleus of such an institution. William 
A. Whitehead, Esq., joined us, and became the leader of the 
movement. The Hon. William B. Kinney powerfully pro- 
moted the work, as did William Rankin, James B. Pinneo, 
Peter H. Duryee, and others whose names do not now recur. 
The idea of a private collection was abandoned ; a joint-stock 
company was formed ; subscriptions were solicited, and the 
plan for a large library building was adopted. The work 
went forward with much favor, until we came toward the 
amount required to justify us in making a contract. A public 
meeting was held, with the Mayor of the city, Mr. Vander- 
pool, in the chair. Reports were made of the state of the 
subscription to the capital stock, and it was admitted that 
all efforts had been exhausted, and the last shares could find 
no takers. The thing had failed. At this crisis one of the 
ardent promoters of the enterprise rose to his feet and said : 
" Mr. Chairman and Mayor, I have this day read an inci- 
dent in the history of Rome. The citizens were assembled 
in vast multitudes to behold the inauguration of a statue on 
the summit of a column standing in the middle of a public 
square. By means of ropes and pulleys the marble statue 
was to be raised to its place, and at the word of command 
the enginery was set in motion, and slowly, steadily, and truly 
the statue went up by the side of the column. The breath- 
less multitude gazed as it was nearing the summit, when it 
ceased to rise ; for as its base came within a fraction of an 
inch of the top of the pillar, the ropes proved to be so 
much too short, the pulley-blocks touched each other, and 
the statue hung in mid-air. A murmur of disappointment 
arose from the multitude. The thing was a failure. The 
Pope was presiding, and it is said that he ordered the people 
not to speak of the disgraceful afTair till arrangements could 
be made for the more successful accomplishment of the 
undertaking. At this juncture a sailor cried out, 'Wet the 
ropes, wet the ropes.' The hint was taken. Water was ap- 
plied to the ropes, which immediately contracted, and by the 



WETTING THE ROPES. 31I 

contraction the needed inch was gained and the statue stood 
in its place, erect and sublime. Now, Mr. Chairman, if our 
scheme has failed, I beg that you as Ma\'or will issue an order 
that the word ' Library ' shall not be mentioned on the streets 
of the city till we have invented some new machinery and 
brought this matter to a successful issue. But in the mean 
time let me cry, ' Wet the ropes.' There are men here who 
could easily throw on a few pails of water and pull this thing 
through to-night." 

Peter Duryee — a noble man he was, quick and willing to 
every good work. — cried out from his seat, "I will pour on 
five pails of water; I will take five shares more." Mr. Rankin, 
who was the largest subscriber already, said, " I will take ten 
more;" and so it went on until within half an hour all the 
stock was taken and the work was done. 

To finish the Roman incident, let me add that the sailor 
who suggested wetting the ropes was from Bordighiera, a 
village on the Mediterranean, near Mentone, where was an 
abundance of palm-trees, the leaves of which had large sale 
in Rome at Palm Sunday ; and it was ordered that this village 
should have the monopoly of the trade in palms for this holy 
purpose — a privilege enjoyed, it is said, until this day. And 
in order that a score or more readers may be saved the 
trouble of writing to me to say that I am mistaken about the 
Roman story, and that it was the erection of the obelisk in 
front of St. Peter's Church, under Pope Sixtus, in 1586, I will 
add that I have read the incident as I have related it ; but if 
you prefer it as some guide-books give it, you have perfect 
liberty of choice. The moral is the same either way, and one 
story is quite as likely to be true as the other. 

And the moral of it is this — as we used it in raising money 
for the Library : " Never despair of success until you have ex- 
hausted your last resource, and do not call upon Hercules, 
or any one else, till you have done all you can yourself." It 
is very certain that we would have had no library if at that 
crisis we had requested the Mayor to be chairman of a com- 
mittee to visit New York and solicit funds to complete our 
important undertaking. What a powerful argument we could 



312 IRENAiUS LETTERS. 

have constructed out of our overburdened community ; the 
few men of wealth among us, the fewer still who appreciate 
the benefits of books, and the great multitude who need the 
advantages of such a public institution. It would have been 
as strong an appeal as it is possible now to make in behalf of 
three fourths of the objects that go away from home for help. 
But we did no such thing as that. Nor did we give it up. 
Between the sum we had raised already and the necessary 
amount, there was a gap. Not very wide, indeed. But 
an inch on the end of a gentleman's nose is a great exten- 
sion of that important organ. And the inch on the statue 
as it rose toward the summit of the column was as fatal to 
its inauguration, if it could not be overcome, as though it 
had been a mile. And when the call was made to wet the 
ropes each man vied with the other to see who could and 
would put on the first and most water. Thus faith and works 
combined to give victory. Peter Duryee was as quick to 
respond as Bresca, the sailor of Bordighiera, to shout the 
order. And the energy, the will-power, the self-devotion of 
the citizens who followed the lead of Peter Duryee, closed up 
the fatal gap, and placed the library, like a statue on the 
summit of a column, like a city on a hill, like a lighthouse on 
the rock, an ornament and defence, a beauty and blessing, in 
the midst of Newark. With the funds thus raised we went 
on and erected a solid structure, fifty feet wide and one hun- 
dred feet deep, endowed it with a large and valuable library, 
reading and lecture-rooms, and now, after the lapse of forty 
years, it stands more useful than the obelisk before St. Peter's, 
a monument to the memory of its founders dead, and a proud 
satisfaction for those who yet live to remember the cry that 
rang out that dark night in Washington Hall, " Wet the 
ropes, wet the ropes !" 



STORY OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN'S PRAYER. 313 



STORY OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN'S PRAYER. 

Only an hour's journey from the city of New York, let us 
suppose it was in the county of Westchester, a wealthy 
Christian citizen had his country-seat. Mr. Robinson was of 
the Scotch-Irish persuasion. It is good stock, and no better 
citizens and Christians have mingled their blood with Ameri- 
cans, or have more nobly served the Church and the State, in 
New Hampshire and North Carolina, and elsewhere, before 
and since the War of Independence. 

Mr. Robinson was a member of one of the oldest churches 
in this city, of which Dr. Phillips was long the distinguished 
and excellent pastor. His parishioner was a large giver to 
objects of Christian benevolence, but he was fitful, impulsive, 
and crotchety ; not always wise in his gifts, and often very un- 
wise in withholding. But he had great confidence in the 
judgment of his pastor, and a line of indorsement from him 
was as regularly and promptly honored as his own note of 
hand. Dr. Phillips was too good and too judicious ever to 
abuse this confidence, and therefore was very careful not to 
lend his name to any man or any object that was not above 
suspicion. Mr. Lawrie was an elder in theciiurch in Western 
Pennsylvania. He came to New York to obtain donations 
from wealthy Christians to a church work of a local but very 
important character, of which Dr. Phillips had knowledge. 
To him Mr. Lawrie applied for introductions to men who 
would be likely to give him money. This is one of the most 
delicate offices a pastor is called to discharge. It is not a 
pleasant service to send a solicitor of contributions to a 
friend who would otherwise remain unapproached. The 
banker or merchant thus visited may feel that his pastor has 
not done a kindness in directing the agent to call on him. All 
men do not feel so. There was the late Hanson K. Corning, 
Esq., a rich merchant in this city, who never in any one in- 
stance failed to respond favorably to applications I made to 
him by letter or by sending worthy men to him, and uni- 
formly he thanked me for having called his attention to the 



314 IREN^US LETTERS. 

case. Mr. Lawrie met Dr. Phillips in a book-store and asked 
him for an introduction to Mr. Robinson, who was now out 
at his summer residence in the country. Dr. Phillips took a 
bit of paper lying on the counter, and with his lead-pencil 
wrote a few lines of introduction, commending Mr. Lawrie 
and his cause to the kind consideration of his friend Mr. 
Robinson. The good elder immediately took the railroad 
train, and reached the elegant mansion of Mr. Robinson just 
as the family were assembled to take tea. Being told that 
there was a man at the door with a letter from Dr. Phillips, 
Mr. Robinson invited the stranger into the dining-room, and 
took the letter from his hand. The instant he looked at it 
he exclaimed, "This is not from Dr. Phillips; he never sent 
such a scrawl as this in pencil ; you are an impostor — I know 
you are ; I don't want to hear anything you have to say." 
Mr. Lawrie was a Scotch-Irishman also, and was quite as 
blunt and decided as the rich man whose table was before 
him. He repeated his assertion that the letter was genuine, 
explained the circumstances under which it was given to 
him, and said that he would return to town and vindicate 
his character from the aspersion so unjustly cast upon him. 
Mr. Robinson was somewhat mollified, but like all of his 
blood, very much set in his way, he was slow to give in. He 
said to Mr. Lawrie : 

" Sit down and take tea with us before you return." 
"No, I thank you," said the plucky elder; "I will neither 
drink nor eat with a man who calls me an impostor ;" and he 
resolutely kept his chair by the window, looking out on the 
beautiful lawn, very lovely with its lights and shadows in the 
setting sun. Conversation, in which he joined, went on, and 
Mr. Robinson could not fail to admire the intelligence of the 
stranger whom he had so rudely assailed. After tea the 
family, including a retinue of servants, had evening worship. 
The head of the house read a portion of Holy Scripture, a 
psalm was sung, and Mr. Robinson, addressing the stranger 
within his gate, said, " Mr. Lawrie, will you pray?" 

Without a moment's hesitation the elder kneeling in the 
midst of the family led in a prayer like one of the old prophets 



STORY OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN'S PRAYER. 315 

or Scotch worthies. He was a man of large gifts. I have seen 
and heard him in debate in the General Assembly, holding his 
ground against eminent divines. He was mighty in prayer 
and he prevailed with God. Doubtless the language, tones, 
and accent of that family prayer filled the mind of Mr. Rob- 
inson with holy memories of childhood and youth when "the 
big ha' Bible lay on the stand," and his father was the patri- 
arch and priest offering the morning and evening sacrifice. 
The scriptural terms in which the soul found expression 
were familiar, and all their associations were with honest 
piety and the fear of God. It was probably a long prayer, 
for such was the custom of the people from whom the stranger 
and his host were sprung. But it came to an end, and as 
Mr. Lawrie was rising to his feet Mr. Robinson fell on his 
neck, exclaiming : 

"You are no impostor, sir; you are no impostor, you are a 
child of God!" 

Strong men sometimes shed tears, and these two men, 
now brethren, wept together. Mr. Robinson begged forgive- 
ness for his unjust suspicions, compelled the elder to stay 
with him over-night, and on the morrow sent him away with 
a lighter heart and a much heavier purse than he had when 
repulsed the day before. 

Christians recognize one another more clearly and intel- 
ligently in prayer than in conversation. Doubtless the soul 
is more unveiled in the eye of man, as it is always unveiled 
in the sight of God. Men may dissemble even at the altar 
and deceive their fellow-men, when bringing their gifts; but 
there is a deep and tender sense in which the heart answer- 
eth to heart, and the speech of the soul in prayer betrays the 
character. And this explains the wonderful likeness of 
Christian doctrine and experience as revealed in the prayers 
of the people of God. Argument in debate or in books may 
prove that Jews and Samaritans have nothing in common, 
but the time has come when the worshippers of God in spirit 
and truth are all one and the same in Him who is their com- 
mon Saviour. We pray alike, and therefore we feel alike, 
and this is the union of heart and mind that realizes the 



3l6 I RE N^ us LETTERS. 

answer to the most wonderful of the Divine Master's prayers 
for his people that they all might be one. 



THE GREATEST THIEF IN THE WORLD. 

Who steals my purse steals trash ; but he who takes my time robs me of 
that which enriches him not, but makes me poor indeed. — Old Play un- 
proved. 

When we were learning to write at school one of the most 
common of the copies set for us was, " Time is precious, and 
we ought to improve it." 

Very few boys, whether they have that for a copy or not, 
get any proper idea of the value of the moments as they pass, 
and ninety-nine boys out of a hundred set more store by a 
dozen marbles or one kite, than they do by a solid hour to be 
improved in getting knowledge. Well, there is a time to 
play as well as to work, and in childhood time is often as 
well improved by healthful play as by hard study. Old peo- 
ple think young folks fools because they waste so much 
in that which brings no return, except in health and fun ; but 
all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, and we do not 
want the boys to be dull. But the boy is father of the man, 
and in nine cases out of ten as the boy is in this matter of 
employing his time, so will the man be. The same may be 
said of girls, and we are now speaking of the human family. 
Therefore the child should be taught the value of time so 
soon as he is able to learn anything. Habits acquired in the 
morning cling until the evening of life, and the "twig" prov- 
erb is as true now as when it was first made. 

Spare moments are like bits of gold, and he who improves 
them will learn that they are worth more than money. It is 
well to have something to do that can be done at odds and 
ends of time so that the fragments may be gathered and noth- 
ing lost. This may be carried to excess, and would have been 
if the rural pastor had followed his hired man's retort. The 
minister told his man to keep the hatchel in the barn and 



THE GREATEST THIEF IN THE WORLD. %\'J 

some flax ready so that he could have something to do when- 
ever driven in by the rain or while waiting for dinner. " And 
would it not be well," said the man, " for you to have a 
hatchel in the pulpit and do a little work while they are 
singing." This would be out of place, but still the rule is a 
good one, to have some work on hand, of a useful character, 
that no moment may be spent in idleness. 

Each one will divide his time among his duties, according 
to his own judgment, with regard to health and pleasure. 
Eight hours for work, eight hours for refreshment, and eight 
hours for sleep, divides the day into thirds, and makes a fit 
programme. Moralists and physiologists have disputed over 
this division, and no rule can be made to cover all cases. 
Some kinds of work may be pursued successfully more than 
eight hours a day, and the attempt to regulate a day's work 
by statute law proves a failure always, because a man's time 
is his own, and he must be free to use it as his own judg- 
ment or wants may dictate. Some men's work is never 
done. They give every waking moment to it, and when time 
has come to go to bed, there is still something not finished. 
Such workers want ten days in a week and thirty hours in 
each day. 

A young man comes to me and wants me to put him in the 
way of getting something to do. "What have you been 
doing?" 

"Not much of anything: a job here and there just as I 
could get a chance. I would like a steady place." 

So we talk it over and I give him the best advice in my 
power, and promise to keep an eye out and let him know if I 
can see or hear anything to his advantage. This being done, 
it is time for him to go and leave me to do what my hand 
finds to do. Instead of that he talks on, asks questions, 
looks at the wall, shifts in his seat, and waits as though he 
were expecting something to drop from the ceiling into his 
lap. In this way he consumes half an hour of my time, 
makes me sick and tired of him, and less disposed to do any- 
thing for him. Then I learn why it is that he is out of work. 
He does not like to work. He is idle, lazy, and will prob- 



3l8 IREN^US LETTERS. 

ably never earn his living. There is no need of saying to him, 
" Go West, young man." He would starve on the richest 
prairie in Illinois. He is a prodigal, wasting his own time, 
and a thief when he takes mine. And that is what I mean 
by the greatest thief in the world : he is one who, doing 
nothing himself, steals the time of one who wants to w^rk 
and has his hands full. 

Thus it is often said if you want anything done, ask a busy 
man to do it. He is busy, full of work, because he is able 
and willing to work. Rivers to the ocean run. The work- 
ers are the few. The successful are the few. It is time im- 
proved that makes money, chara'cter, usefulness, yes, and gets 
heaven. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the 
violent take it by force. 

" The world owes me a living" is the plea of idleness. 
The world owes you no such thing. What did you ever do 
for the world? How came it into your debt.? All that you 
are and have God gave you, and to him you are in debt, in- 
finitely beyond what you will ever be able to pay. And this 
gift of time, this loan of time, this grand opportunity for 
work, is the evidence of God's willingness that you shall have 
a chance to do something for Him to whom you owe life, 
health, and everything besides. 

Time rises and spreads out and clothes itself with splendor 
and wealth and blessedness unspeakable. As a vast tract, an 
ocean, a prairie, a continent, it seems a portion of eternity, 
and beyond all price valuable to him who stands on its edge 
or floats on its bosom. But cut up into sections, portions, 
little bits of time, called hours or minutes, each one of them 
is like an ingot of gold, and to waste them is sin and shame 
worse than his who casts golden eagles by the handful into 
the sea. For, here is the solution of the problem of poverty : 
Time improved wins enough for everybody, and with here 
and there an exception where circumstances control the fate 
of individuals, he is comfortable who makes right use of his 
time, and whoso wastes it is poor. 

And this takes hold on eternity. Time ends with the letter 
that begins eternity. And so eternity is time indefinitely ex- 



MORAL CULTURE OF POOR WOMEN. 319 

tended. The one wasted makes the other an infinite waste 
and want. The one improved makes honor, glory, immortal 
life. This is the doctrine of the gospels and the epistles, and 
the teaching of the Apostles and the experience of the peo- 
ple in all ages and everywhere. What a man soweth that 
shall he also reap. It is not hard work to go to ruin. Only 
let go your hold on eternal life, and the descent is easy, the 
fall is swift, and the abyss is deep, dark, and has no bottom. 
Waste these precious hours of life in idle living, do nothing, 
swing on a gate all day while others strive to enter in, and 
you will suffer as a thief and a murderer, and perhaps will 
become both. For there is no greater thief in the world than 
he who robs God of time lent him : he is a murderer who by 
listless idleness destroys his own soul. 



MORAL CULTURE OF POOR WOMEN. 

It is advertised that a prize of $500 will be given to the 
writer of the best poem on an elephant now making a tour 
in the United States. It has been wittily said that anybody 
can write a poem on an elephant if the animal will stand 
still long enough. I would cheerfully give a purse of $500 to 
one who writes a poem or an essay solving the problem of 
poverty, and teaching us how to do the best thing to help 
those who will not help themselves. 

Here we are in a world made by the wise and good God. 
It is a good world. It has enough for everybody, and there 
is no need that any son or daughter of man should suffer for 
the want of any good thing. It is an old, easy, and true say- 
ing, that all the misery comes from sin, and the way to 
make the miserable happy is to make them good ; but how 
to make them good — that's the trouble. We have the poor 
with us always. And we shall have them till the good time 
comes when the leopard and the lamb shall be led by a little 
child. Then there will be no more misery. 

Because Felix Adler and unbelieving reformers have 



3^0 IREN^US LETTERS. 

sneered at moral culture by pious people as a means of im- 
proving the condition of the poor, it has become fashionable 
to undervalue religious instruction as a means of elevating 
the condition of the very wretched ; but it should be remem- 
bered that cleanliness and godliness are near akin : the gospel 
of Christ is a foe to dirt. I have been led to these words by 
receiving a printed pamphlet which you can get for ten 
cents by sending to No. 6 East Fourteenth Street, in this 
city. It is on the " Moral Elevation of Girls, with sugges- 
tions relating to preventive work, by the committee on the 
elevation of the poor in their homes." If I thought that you 
would take the trouble to go or send for this story, I would 
not inflict upon you this letter, which is intended to give you 
some idea of what is to be done and what is done in this 
city and other cities, and by the multiplication of what agen- 
cies the revolution must and may be effected, to the infinite 
advantage of poor women. The class to be reached is de- 
scribed by the sketch of one typical woman : 

"She was born into a large family, where she received 
little or no personal attention from her parents. From the 
age of six to that of fourteen she spent her mornings in 
school and her afternoons in the street, or she ' minded 
baby.' After fourteen she worked in a factory or shop, 
where the influences fostered a love of dress, which was 
strengthened by maternal vanity at home, and instead of 
saving her wages she spent them chiefly on finery or sweets. 
Her evenings were devoted to such amusement as she 
could find, without any improvement to herself. She never 
had any opportunity of studying hygiene, and grew up in 
total ignorance of the laws governing her own physical 
being, as well as of household management, or care of chil- 
dren. 

"At the age of twenty, being then an ignorant and irre- 
sponsible creature, she married a workman making small 
daily wages, and assumed cares for which she was unequal, 
and duties for which she was wholly unfit. Not knowing 
how to economize either money, time, or strength, her 
household matters were irksome burdens, and when chil- 



MORAL CULTURE OF POOR WOMEN. 321 

dren came to increase these cares she sank beneath her load 
into a cross, untidy, overworlced drudge. We find her at 
this stage of her existence with dulled senses, trying to feed 
and clothe her children, possibly sending them to school, 
glad to be rid of them, and willing, in their playtime, to 
leave them to chance influences, only too apt to be demoral- 
izing. Mother-love is known only as an instinct that sur- 
vives when all other mental and moral processes have been 
crushed under the pressure of her overburdened life. 

"There is a dreary monotony in such lives, and circum- 
stances of time and place afford little variety. In the 
crowded cottage-home in summer there is the red-hot stove, 
the wash-tub full of steaming clothes, the rocking-chair in 
which the crying baby is tied, the impatient children home 
from school, hurrying and worrying the tired mother for the 
dinner which is cooking, and must be eaten quickly, and 
some of it carried to the absent father working in the shop. 
The mother, vainly trying to do everything at once, still finds 
time to scold, often to strike first one, then another, till all 
are alike irritable under this her only system of management, 
her only idea of discipline. 

" Or, in another home, in winter, there is the cold stove, 
the bare shelf, the empty pocket, the baby pinched and 
wasted in its cradle, the children shivering with cold or 
burning with fever; sickness, poverty, and gloom, influences 
which the poor, pale inefficient mother has no power to dis- 
pel. Sometimes, worn out with toil, she lies helplessly ill, 
watching with hopeless eyes the struggles of her daughter, 
who with the courage of youth is trying bravely to carry on 
the household with little help and small success. Sometimes 
the added weight of sin on the father's part comes like an 
avalanche of woe on the wife, who, thankful for the drunken 
sleep which secures her and her children from drunken fury, 
employs her opportunity to finish the dozen shirts for which 
she is to receive the thirty or forty cents which will feed her 
hungry little ones. These scenes may be found by the thou- 
sand." 

Thousands ! Yes, and because they are so many, even 

21 



322 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

Christianity staggers and fears to essay the hopeless task of 
making these homes better. The Son of God saw a world 
lying in sin and misery, and oh ! amazing grace — he came and 
bore the mighty load on his heart of hearts. And there are 
those in this and other cities who are not deterred from do- 
ing something, if they cannot do everything. They leave 
the tremendous work of building better houses for the poor 
to those who have the wisdom and the means to work out 
that intricate problem. In some places it is worked out well. 
But woman's work among the poor is going about like Christ 
doing good. It is coming into actual, personal contact and 
association with these mothers in their own rooms, called by 
courtesy /tomes. The ladies who have become missionaries 
to their own sex in the lowliest apartments in a great city 
find themselves confronted by the fact that one room is the 
whole of the home: here five or six, sometimes more, of both 
sexes sleep and live! What a life! All sense of modesty, 
decency, and virtue is destroyed. Is there aught more hope- 
less or helpless than the moral elevation of such a nest as 
this : perhaps a den is a better word, for the inmates must 
be more like beasts in a den than birds in their little nests. 
The first step toward improvement is to get the family to 
put up a curtain and so divide the male denomination from 
the female during the night. Mrs. Janes gave a poor woman 
such^ curtain, and she says : "The pleasure and pride taken 
in that one piece of modest tapestry was beyond the expec- 
tation of the giver. Not only was it kept in constant use to 
divide the one room into two, but soon there were six other 
tenement-house rooms similarly screened, and consequently 
rendered more decent and pure." 

Going on from this simple beginning these enterprising 
Christian ladies inspire their poor friends with notions of or- 
der, neatness, and even beauty, to make the humblest apart- 
ment more attractive. Then they are taught the simple ele- 
ments of health-keeping and the management of ailments, 
while the book and the picture, the pleasant story and the 
song, with lessons of purity and religion, come in to enliven, 
comfort, and bless the renovated home. 



MORAL CULTURE OF POOR WOMEN. 323 

These poor mothers are gathered into pleasant vestries and 
chapels to hear such lessons as will help them to higher and 
better living. They are taught useful and delicate arts, the 
use of the needle, and how to make a little go a long way. 
One lady was speaking to three hundred women of the joy 
of a well-ordered home. As the picture grew of the little 
girl-child left to herself, and learning lessons of vice outside 
the mother's knowledge, of the factory life, the dancing- 
class at night, the final ruin of the girl — some women began 
to cry, others clasped their children closer in their arms, and 
at last one said, "O lady! why didn't we know it before.^ 
We might have saved our girls !" 

Even more interesting and hopeful is the work going on 
among the girls themselves — girls who work all day and have 
their evenings dedicated by them to amusement, treading the 
pavement of the road to hell. Hundreds, would that I could 
say thousands, of these bright, smart, wild girls have been 
gathered into evening classes and entertained with useful 
and pleasant employments, restful, cheerful, and elevating. 
Young ladies of our best Christian families leave their own 
elegant homes and give their evenings gladly to this blessed 
mission of love and good-will to their lowly sisters for whom 
nobody cared. 

It is a grand mistake to suppose that the poor hate to be 
helped to higher life by those who are far above them in 
social position. It requires tact, wisdom, as well as zeal. 
Especially is every feeling of condescension to be avoided. 
God only has a right to condescend. We are all sinners, 
brother sinners, sister sinners, fellow sinners. And if the 
grace of God has made us to differ, let us not take airs on 
ourselves, as if we were better than they. In His sight we 
are all unclean. God be merciful to us sinners. The poor 
love sympathy. They instinctively know a sympathizing 
friend. Silks and laces may cover a warm and loving heart, 
and the poor feel its beats and rejoice in it. 

"Send me," said one day a poor woman, "the lady with 
the sweet smile and the bright golden hair." 

I have not given you one line for every page of this story 



324 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

of what noble women are doing. I have sought to enlist 
you in the same work, that hundreds may become thousands, 
and the cities and villages and all the churches may abound 
in these labors of Christian love. 



DANGERS AND DUTIES OF THE RICH. 

There are some bad signs in the heavens just now. I am 
not apt to be scared at trifles, and would not readily mistake 
the hooting of an owl for the roaring of a mob. But there 
are evil omens, and he is not an alarmist or a coward who 
lifts up a voice of warning when the heavens gather black- 
ness and hoarse thunders growl in the distance. 

One morning last week I read in the daily papers of a ban- 
quet given to Henry George in a large theatre in this city. 
It was in honor of the man and his principles. I have 
nothing to say of his private life and character, of which I 
know nothing. But of his principles, set forth in his writ- 
ings and speeches, it is a duty to speak, and in terms of 
righteous denunciation. They are worthy to be had in uni- 
versal detestation. It is a marvel of marvels that they find 
favor with any good men anywhere. His main principle is 
that the State should rob the owners of land, take it all 
from them without compensation, and let it out to the people. 
This form of socialism he travels over the world to preach, 
and tens of thousands hail him as an apostle of a new dis- 
pensation. It was amazing to read the names of our citizens 
who gathered to do this man honor. The names were, some 
of them, of men of education, position, and property, and I 
would not have been more surprised to read that they had 
all of them lost their reason and had been sent to lunatic 
asylums, than I was to find them publicly committing them- 
selves to the revolutionary socialism of Henry George. 
It proves that the foundations of society are shaken up 
We know that life has not been as safe of late years as it 
once was, and we may know now that property is not. Tlie 



DANGERS AND DUTIES OF THE RICH. 325 

Communistic sentiments of the Old World have been rap- 
idly gaining ground in this country. They assume a different 
form with us from that which obtains in Russia, Germany, 
and France. There the Socialists seek to extort their de- 
mands by force, terror, and blood. Here they make the laws, 
and gradually frame their socialism into the legislation of 
the State. In addition to the higher education the State 
now gives to all its children, it is hinted, and not very softly, 
that they should be furnished with food and then with rai- 
ment. Already the prisoners are assured of board and 
lodging without labor. The whole trend of things is to the 
distribution of loaves and fishes among the multitude. 

The danger is that this tendency will get beyond control. 
The hardest problem that statesmanship has to solve is to 
reconcile liberty with order. " Thus far shalt thou go and 
no farther" may just as wisely be spoken to the proud waves 
of the sea as to the roused wrath of an angry multitude. 
And in a country like ours, where the people bear rule, and 
make and unmake the laws, liberty rushes into licentious- 
ness and sweeps away all barriers in the mad zeal of many 
for what they call reform of abuses and the establishment of 
equal rights. 

The rich have duties, and those duties would be binding 
if there were no dangers. The right of property is perfect, 
but that does not make it sure. Rights are constantly invaded. 
The law comes in and robs the citizen in the name of the 
public good. Thethief breaks through and steals the property 
to which you have a perfect right. And in a city and a 
nation where the majority may become the most heartless and 
brainless tyrants in the whole earth, what safety is there in 
laying up treasures ? The cyclones, the floods, and the fires 
are not half so much to be feared as Henry George and the 
social reformers who feed him in a banquet-house under the 
banner of "no property in land." Yes, the rich have duties, 
and they are far, very far from making any appropriate, 
attempt to discharge them. They, the rich, are accumulate 
ing, as is their right, but they are not giving in just propor- 
tion to their accumulations, and there they are doing wrong. 



326 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

If rights and duties go together — and certainly they do — and 
a man has a right to possess great wealth, the duty to use it 
for the benefit of others is a binding duty. It may not be 
enforced by a human law. It is duty under the highest law 
that God ever gave, a greater law than any of Sinai's Ten, 
the Law of Love. Probably every thoughtful man, without 
being rich, has often said to iiimself, " If I had vast wealth I 
would use it as God uses his infinite stores." But when the 
riches came the mighty purpose perished, and the man of 
noble intentions was only one more rich and prosperous 
property-holder. What, then, would you do with the money 
of the rich ? 

I would employ millions on millions of dollars for the 
moral elevation and improvement of the people. There is 
one and only one cure for the evil that now threatens society 
and puts life and property in peril. That cure is purely 
moral. Science does not touch the evil. Education, in the 
usual sense of that word, is wholly powerless. There is in 
the gospel of Jesus Christ a remedy, and that should be 
brought to bear on the rich, and through the rich on the 
poor. The wealth of the city oiaght to be with judgment 
and wisdom employed in the improvement of the temporal, 
social, and moral condition of the masses of humanity fester- 
ing in their own corruption and ready to break out in a 
pestilence that will fill the streets with riot, and make their 
palaces a desolation. It is wise to anticipate and prevent 
the evil day. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. And he is 
working with the Lord who works for the salvation of men. 
It would be wise economy, a judicious employment of money, 
if the knowledge of God's truth and man's obligation were 
brought home to the mind and conscience of every man, 
woman, and child. It would be wise to improve the dwelling- 
places of the poor; buy for them light and air and room; 
make friends of them by being friendly to them ; expel from 
their neighborhood all sources of disease, and supply them 
with means of rational, innocent, and healthful enjoyment ; 
and with church and chapel, and house-to-house efforts, bring 
the holy influences of Christ's work to each and every one 



MORE THAN THERE'S BUSINESS FOR. 327 

of those for whom he died. To make these reforms would 
cost a vast amount of money. The rich ought to give of 
their abundance to do it. They are in danger. Their prop- 
erty is in danger. The floods are coming. The foundations 
are quaking. Society is honeycombed with the principles 
of communism. The cave of Adullam is full. And when 
its inhabitants come forth they cannot be scourged back 
again. 



MORE THAN THERE'S BUSINESS FOR. 

Passing the night at a wayside inn, in. the course of my 
travel this summer, I asked the landlord " How many churches 
are there in this village .-*" 

"More than there's business for," was his ready and very 
suggestive if not definite answer. 

Pursuing my inquiries I learned that there were five dis- 
tinct congregations, each with some sort of a house for public 
worship, two or three of them have ministers most of the 
time, one or two have settled pastors, but most of them de- 
pend on supplies, living as it were from hand to mouth, all 
having a name to live, but not one has a vigorous existence, 
not one is a thriving, efficient organization. 

The landlord used a commercial phrase, but very expres- 
sive, when he said they have more churches than there's 
business for, and I know very well what he meant. He was 
a tavern-keeper, and if there were five men keeping as many 
taverns in the place, they would all starve or close. The 
travel was not enough to warrant more than one public house, 
and the law of demand and supply limited the number. 

In many villages I find the same state of things existing in 
regard to churches which the landlord so aptly defined. It 
is very true of new villages. A few families of one denomi- 
nation struggled hard to get a church established of their 
denomination. Another set of people have been always of 
another name, and they want a church of their own. And 



328 IRENJEUS LETTERS. 

so they go on, each little community dividing and subdivid- 
ing. They have missionary societies and church extension 
boards, and to them they all make appeals for help, and for 
the most part they each get a little aid, just enough to keep 
life in them, and they struggle on year after year, making 
very little progress, and rarely becoming able to support 
themselves. 

What is the duty of Christian people in this matter.'' Is 
there no principle involved in the question } May not every 
one properly seek a church of his own faith and order, and 
build it up for his own edification and that of his children? 
Certainly. And this is his privilege and duty when it is in 
his power to do so. But in any community it is better to 
have one or two vigorous churches than half a dozen feeble 
and fainting. It comes to this, that the Christian spirit of a 
community is to be exercised in sustaining the ordinances of 
religion, and sectarianism should not be so strong as to forbid 
hearty co-operation in the support of the gospel. 

" Where would I draw the line?" It is hard to do it, but 
some general truths can be stated that may help us in ascer- 
taining what is our duty. 

I would not attend on the preaching of a minister who does 
not believe and teach the vital and essential doctrines of the 
gospel ; who does not hold to the divine inspiration of the 
whole of the Bible ; or who teaches such error as will have 
an injurious effect on the minds of the children and young 
people. This is not very definite, I am aware, but it is so 
nearly the rule of faith and practice that I am willing to be- 
lieve it may serve to indicate an opinion as to what Chris- 
tians ought to do when placed in communities where they 
may not be able to have a church of their own order. 

In the New York Observer of June 19, 1884, was published the 
masterly letter sent to the Presbyterian General Assembly at 
Saratoga by the General Conference of the Methodist Church 
meeting in Philadelphia. The statement of truth there made 
is a remarkable illustration of the approach to unity in senti- 
ment by two denominations supposed to be more strongly 
contrasted than any other two branches of the Christian 



MORE THAN THERE'S BUSIA^ESS FOR. 329 

church. If the spirit of that remarkable letter were preva- 
lent in all the churches, the sectarian element would subside 
without diminishing the denominational sentiment which is 
not necessarily opposed to the spirit of Christ. The older 
we grow the stronger becomes our attachment- to the forms 
and opinions in which we were educated, or which we have 
intelligently adopted. At the same time it ought to be true 
and for the most part it is true, with increasing age and 
knowledge we should be more charitable toward those who 
differ from us. Let them hold the faith in such form of 
words as to them seems the most fitting. And if they are 
one with Christ the head, they will be one with all who are 
members. And so as I go from place to place, mingling with 
God's people of every name, I find them to be so nearly of 
one heart and mind that the oneness of Christianity appears 
in all denominations of worshippers who have held fast to 
the fundamental truths of our holy religion. I do not forget 
that there has been a falling away of some. The tendency 
has been of late years to attenuating the word. Even gold 
may be beaten out so thin as to be nearly useless. And the 
truth itself is made very thin indeed in the preaching of 
many. From such preaching it is well to stay away. But if 
I were settling down in a Western village where there were 
two churches of different names and neither of them of the 
same name with the one to which I belong, I would find out the 
one in which the saving truths of the gospel are preached with 
the greatest purity, fidelity, and power, and instead of trying 
to get up another feeble church after the pattern I prefer, I 
would cast in my lot with those who are trying to serve God, 
and save the souls of men. 

It might be a Baptist church. It is not important that I 
should hold the same views in regard to the sacrament of 
baptism that the church hold, in order to be edified by the 
ministry. If I were excluded from the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper because I did not receive the other sacrament as the 
church receives it, it would be a great trial, and I would 
seek the privilege of communion elsewhere, when it was pos- 
sible to find it. But even this deprivation would not make 



330 irenjEus letters. 

it impracticable for me to be edified under a ministry of a 
denomination to which I do not belong. 

So could I work heartily and hopefully in almost any evan- 
gelical church where the whole Bible was received as the 
word of God. I would not sit under the preaching of a min- 
ister who tried to prove that Moses was not the author of the 
Pentateuch, or that Jesus Christ did not know what is meant 
by the law and the prophets ; I would not sit at the feet of 
any man who denies the true and proper divinity of the Lord 
who bought me with his own blood. I would not have for a 
spiritual teacher one who says it shall be well with the 
wicked who die in their sins, or that one so dying will have 
another opportunity of repentance and faith when the door 
is shut. But with any faithful servant of God, who teaches a 
pure gospel, I could work and be happy, whatever the name by 
which he and his church were called. 

And this ought to be the evidence that they who love Christ 
in sincerity and truth are one, whatever diversity may prevail 
in the order of their church and ministry. What a weight 
and world of sense there is in the old form of words, " In es- 
sentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, char- 
ity!" On that platform we stand up for what we know to be 
vital ; we cordially unite with those who differ from us in 
things not fundamental ; and towards all men we have that 
charity which never faileth. 



STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM; 

OR, THE PLEASURES OF GIVING AND RECEIVING COMPARED 

It was in the time of the war, the late war, I trust the last 
war. At my country-place on the Hudson River, some 
twenty miles above the city, I had a number of friends at 
dinner. The strawberries of the dessert were from my own 
garden, and their size excited the admiration of the party. 
Some one observed that he had seen strawberries so large 



STRAIVBEKRIES AND CREAM. 33 1 

they could not be made to pass through a napkin-ring. 
The experiment was made, and every one had strawberries 
before him that would lie quietly on the top of the ring. 
Then the conversation turned to the prolific qualities of the 
vine, and one stated that a single root had been known to 
produce three hundred berries. This was quite as surprising 
as the size of the strawberries, and by and by we made a per- 
sonal visitation of the garden and found plenty of vines with 
more than three hundred berries on a single root. Thus in 
size and number these equalled anything hitherto reported. 

Among my guests that day was a newspaper man, who 
made a note of what he saw and printed it. The story was 
deemed incredible. A pastor in the West was so shocked 
by the exaggeration, as he considered it, that he caused to be 
published an ofTer to supply the Synod of Ohio with plants 
if I would send him some specimens and they produced such 
fruits. In response to this challenge I made the public offer 
to send by mail, post-paid and without any charge, speci- 
mens of the plants to every person in the United States who 
would send me his post-office address ! ! Very soon the 
names began to come, by tens, by scores and hundreds. The 
gardener put up a dozen plants in a package with moist moss 
about the roots, and each evening on my return from town 
with a new batch of names I directed them and they went 
into the mail. Under the Post-office laws regulating the 
distribution of seeds and plants a packet weighing four 
ounces may be sent to any part of the United States for four 
cents. Names came to me from every State then accessible 
by mail. Frequently money came with the address, but it 
was always returned. Including what plants were sent for 
by neighbors and friends and taken away personally, it was 
calculated that we gave away in the course of the month of 
August more than three thousand strawberry plants. If only 
two hundred packets went by mail the entire outlay was only 
eight dollars, and many a good man spends twice that sum 
every month for things that I never use and would not if they 
cost nothing. But lam quite free to say that the same amount 
of money never brought me so much enjoyment. The next 



332 IREN^US LETTERS. 

year and the year after that came letters from distant States 
telling of the wonderful success of the plants. They arrived 
in good condition, were carefully set out and tended prop- 
erly, and answered all expectations. I have no recollection 
of receiving one expression of disappointment, although it is 
quite probable that in many cases they failed to do well, but 
the people to whom they were sent were too polite to make 
complaint. 

Twenty years ago those plants went into the rural regions 
of this wide country. And from that time to this they have 
gladdened more families than I shall ever hear of, for the 
originals have multiplied and gone into fresh fields and gar- 
dens new, until their number is not to be reckoned. Sev- 
eral bishops are credited with the remark that " Nature 
might have produced a more delicious fruit than the straw- 
berry, but certainly nature never tried to." And there is no 
fruit that yields so much enjoyment and profit at so little 
cost. Therefore if my three thousand plants have in many 
instances continued to multiply and replenish the earth, fur- 
nishing a pleasant treat and refreshment to hundreds of fam- 
ilies whose names I have forgotten and whose faces I do not 
expect to see in this world, great is my reward already and I 
ask no other, being more than paid. For in the strawberry 
season every year there is an hour each day when I am re- 
minded of those splendid vines and rich, ripe fruit, which 
were my pride, and then in quiet thought I go from one end 
of the country to the other and unseen by them I sit by the 
board of those good people who sent me their names, and as 
they pour the rich cream (I wish I had some of it myself) 
over those big, salmon-tinted, oval, luscious strawberries, I 
have not a doubt that I enjoy the dessert more than they do. 
Then multiply that enjoyment by the number of households 
into which those delicious fruits have gone by the successive 
propagations of twenty years, and give me one good heart 
jump for each house and you see that with only a moderate 
degree of exercise my heart would jump out of its place if I 
did not regulate its movements with some considerable care. 
And that finishes my story of strawberries and cream. You say 



STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM. 333 

that it is a boasting, egotistical story. Well, I can stand that : 
I have been telling you how I made a vast sum of personal 
enjoyment by the expenditure twenty years ago of less than 
ten dollars. I never made so profitable and paying an in- 
vestment in all my life. And the income it yields is in har- 
mony with religion, philosophy, history, and the personal ex- 
perience of every one who has tried the experiment. 

The Bible is so full of examples, illustrations, precepts, and 
principles bearing on this matter, that it evidently is of the 
essence of the Christian religion. It is too much to say that 
the sentiment cannot exist outside of Christianity. But it 
is right to say that no one has any sort of claim to be a par- 
taker of Christianity, to be a partner of Him who gave him- 
self for others, who does not enter with all his nature into 
the spirit of this doctrine. It is of the essence of that love 
which is the essence of Him who is Love. It makes the 
whole world kin. 

An aged man — yes, the weight of more than fourscore 
years was on him now — lay dying. He said to me with deep 
emotion: "What pains me most is that I have never lived 
for any one but myself ; I have not sought to make others 
more comfortable or happy." 

But the case is not to be argued from a selfish point of 
view only. It does pay to be good; the good man serves 
the best paymaster in the universe; but it is well to make 
fruits and flowers grow all over this earth, and especially 
where they would not be if we did not send them, even if we 
never know that they gladden any hearts. A word in season 
may be more than a purse of gold to the hearer, and he who 
said it may never hear from it again. But the word is a 
treasure laid up in heaven. Hoarded wealth is no blessing 
to him who hides it in his strong-box. But when he touches 
the lock with the key of love a river of life flows forth to 
make the wilderness bud and blossom as the rose ; the wid- 
ow's heart sings for joy ; ignorance yields to knowledge, as 
darkness flies before incoming light; the word of God is 
multiplied, and the living messenger of the cross, the angel 
with the everlasting gospel, goes forth on his errand of sal- 



334 IREN^US LETTERS. 

vation to the ends of the earth. This is what the good man 
does with his money when the principle of these truths gets 
to work in his soul. He cannot buy happiness here, nor im- 
mortal bliss hereafter. But if he does what he can with his 
money now, and believes it to be more blessed to give than 
to receive, he shall have houses and lands and gold fourfold 
and in the end life everlasting. 



"OUR SOUL LOATHETH THIS LIGHT BREAD." 

That was said of bread that came down from heaven. I 
said it of quite another kind of food. It does not come 
from heaven. Some of it comes from the other place, and 
is evidently baked by the devil and his angels. 

A parcel of new books was lying on my table, and late in 
the evening, when there was nothing else to do, I turned to 
them for soothing influence before going to sleep. Of the 
figs of Jeremiah it was said, 

" The good were very good, 
The bad too sour to give the pigs ;" 

but in this bundle of books there were none of which I could 
conscientiously say " the good are very good," and perhaps 
there were none so bad as to justify their being destroyed. 
If books are to be separated into three classes, good, bad, 
and indifferent, the most of them would come readily under 
the last class. There is nothing in them to commend them 
as intellectual food ; there is no active poison in them to kill 
the innocent reader : but there is also nothing in them whole- 
some or entertaining. I spent an hour or two in seeking one 
good book, a book that had solid information or sparkling 
wit, sense, or fun — something to feed one's mind with useful 
information or to make one laugh a right hearty laugh. And 
the quest was vain. Tired of reading insipid pages, and 
vexed with the shallow platitudes of religious, moral, and lit- 
erary tales and essays, I turned away from them all, and cried 



''OUR SOUL LOATHETH THIS LIGHT BliEAD." Z^S 

out aloud, as did the nianna-fed men in the wilderness, when 
they became sick and tired of a good thing, " My soul loath- 
eth this light stuff." 

Milk for babes; yes, and some babes must have even milk 
diluted with water. And I do not beg that strong meat may 
be prepared for them who are not yet able to digest it. Light 
reading is good in its way. If grown-up men and women, 
business men, ministers, and other professional men would 
find relaxation and refreshment in light reading, they would 
get great good in it. The mother wearied and worn with 
cares many and trying may with profit and pleasure divert 
her thoughts, rest her mind, and benefit her health by seek- 
ing the illusion and exhilaration of a pure, wholesome, and 
enjoyable story of real or ideal life. It will take her out of 
her own troubles, and bring her into sympathy with the joys, 
perhaps the miseries of others, and so help her to forget or 
to bear the plagues by which her daily life is beset. It is 
very easy to tell me just here that in the sweetness of her 
religious faith she ought to find all that in the best of books, 
even the bread that cometh down from heaven ; and in soul- 
communion with Him who is the fount of life and the sov'- 
ereign' balm for every wound. Certainly, but that blessed 
truth does not make medicine needless when malaria has 
poisoned the system. Remedies for weaknesses of the body 
and soul are kind provisions of the great physician, and the 
Christian believer is wise who takes them in time. So the 
wisest and best of men, great authors, preachers, statesmen, 
captains, and financiers, have rested their wearied brains in 
the bowers of fiction, fliying from the cabinet or the camp, 
from the study and the bank, to some quiet solitude, where 
with book in hand they could read without fatigue and be 
carried in fancy away from harassing cares into realms of 
the unreal, and therefore the enjoyable. 

All this is true, but none of the men and women to whom 
light reading is thus commended could stand such stuff and 
nonsense as now lies in heaps of foam, like whipped syllabub, 
all around me. Here is nothing to satisfy the healthy hun- 
ger or thirst of a sensible soul. There is lightness indeed. 



336 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

but nothing else; bubbles only; of which millions would 
not quench the thirst, nor satisfy the desires of any living 
mind. 

Lightness is not necessarily an evil ; it is a positive good 
often — certainly always in bread and in some books. But 
there may be too much of it in bread and books, and then it 
makes them both like the sour figs of the prophet. 

This light literature is the staple of the cheap circulating 
library. It abounds in the libraries of too many Sunday- 
schools. It is sent forth on the wings of its own wind from 
the many presses driven night and day to supply the horse- 
leech cry of the times. The supply soon creates a demand 
for something more stimulating. The wine-bibber by and 
by wants stronger drink. Tliis light food does not satisfy 
the craving of the young. They want the spice of wicked- 
ness in tales of lust or blood, or both, which the devil and 
his angels in Paris and New York issue from their ovens 
every day in the year. The sugar-coating of the pill does 
not weaken the deadly power of the poison it conceals. The 
bad novel, with a pious title, professing to be made in the 
interest of virtue as an exposure and a scourge of vice, is 
but a stimulant of unholy passion, stirring thoughts of un- 
lawful pleasures undreamed of before, luring the unlearned 
and unstable to their ruin. It was astounding to hear the 
wardens of prisons, in a recent convention, when called upon 
to give their opinions as to the causes of crime. They were 
free to declare their convictions that bad books, the cheap 
flash literature flooding the country, might be justly charged 
with a large part of the abounding evil. They spoke of 
what they knew from personal intercourse with tens of thou- 
sands whose crimes had thrust them into prison walls. 
Victims of vile literature ! It was a strange revelation, extra- 
ordinary testimony to come from men who made no preten- 
sions to being saints, and certainly had not a particle of 
sentimentality about them. They were for the most part 
plain, blunt men, who spoke right on and said what they 
knew, and this they did know, that the popular novels of the 
day make thieves and robbers and man-slayers and libertines, 



ON TRAINING BOYS TO BE GOOD CITIZENS. 337 

to the ruin of morals and crowding of prisons. There is 
not one boolv in the heap near me that would inspire any 
one with an evil thought. In most of them there is not force 
enough to inspire a thought of any kind. Thinking is not 
the eflfect they produce. I wonder greatly that anybody 
reads them, and to buy them, paying good money for them, 
money that would buy beef and bread, this the greatest won- 
der is. 

During the last three weeks (since coming home) I have 
read ten or twelve volumes of three or four hundred pages 
eacli, all of them published in this country by the great book- 
makers, whose works go out into all the earth and their 
words to the end of the world. What charms invest these 
pages ! They bring us into the society of the wise and good, 
heroes and heroines of religious life and victory, into regions 
of romance and chivalry, realms of history and fancy, illu- 
mined and enlivened with song and art and story, filling the 
chamber with the companionship of the greatest and bright- 
est and best of the sons and daughters of men. If evil enters 
in the form of villains of history or fiction, the stern features 
of justice, armed and wakeful, appear, and the lesson learned 
is wholesome. The men who write and they who multiply 
such books are benefactors of their race. How great the 
debt we owe them ! If they have become rich by writing or 
by publishing such books so much the better, and every right 
man wishes them happiness in tlieir prosperity. But to them 
who strew the land with good-for-nothing, empty, frivolous, 
inane, jejune books we are compelled to cry, " Our soul 
loatheth this light food," 



ON TRAINING BOYS TO BE GOOD CITIZENS. 

Perhaps you think it were better for me to speak of train- 
ing them to be good Christians. And that is the highest 
style of man. We will talk about it another time. Now, in 
the wake of the great national election, when all minds are 



338 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

exercised with the duties and privileges of citizens, it may 
be well to think seriously of the boys who are coming to the 
front and will soon be the actors in such dramas as the one 
on which the curtain has just fallen in the sight of fifty mil- 
lions of people. 

After the fathers shall be the children. The boy is father 
of the man. Just as the twig is bent, etc. From such say- 
ings we have the simple truth, known from the beginning, 
that the germ of the man is in the boy. We shall see in the 
meat what is bred in the bone. I do not insure the charac- 
ter of any coming man. With perfect trust in the promises 
of God, I know the conditions of success in the education of 
children are so many and so hard that it may easily be shown 
to be the fault of the parent when the boy grows up to be a 
bad man. Nevertheless the promise standeth sure, and the 
facts in the history of families verify the promise. It is a 
gross falsehood to say that the best parents have the worst 
sons. It is an old slander, refuted a thousand times, that the 
sons of ministers are the wildest boys in the parish. One 
prodigal from the parsonage makes more talk and scandal 
than a dozen among the people. It remains true in spite of 
all the gibes and sneers of a censorious world, that the home 
life is the atmosphere in which the foundation of character 
is laid, and the parent is responsible for the principles which 
the son imbibes while yet beneath the parental roof, and 
which for the most part make the character for life. I am 
writing these lines to fathers and mothers, teachers, guard- 
ians, and to all who have the opportunity and the power to 
impress upon the minds and hearts of children and youths 
that moral purity of life and heart is essential to the char- 
acter of a good citizen. A boy who is not truthful is a bad 
boy, and a man who is not truthful is rotten to the core. A 
boy may be tempted to tell a lie and be very sorry for it 
afterward, but when the fault has grown into a habit the little 
fellow has become a scamp, and there is a strong probability 
that he will go to the bad. Growing up to manhood without 
regard to truth, there is no vice into which he may not fall, 
for the sheet-anchor of an upright life is lost, and he drifts 



ON TRAINING BOYS TO BE GOOD CITIZENS. 339 

at the mercy of storms and waves. A minister of the gospel 
once came to me from a neighboring city and said, " A 
dreadful thing has happened in our ministerial circle : one 
of our men has fallen." 

"And I can name him," said I, "though I never heard a 
word against him." 

I did name him, and when called on to give the reason for 
thus singling him out, I replied, " In a controversy had with 
him some time ago I discovered that he would lie, and ever 
since I have been looking for his fall." 

Want of truthfulness implies weakness as well as wickedness, 
and without courage and fortitude a tempted man falls into 
the first trap that is set for him or the first pit in his way. It 
is often and truthfully said that civilized society cannot exist 
without confidence between man and man. We live on it 
every hour. In the deepest recesses of domestic life and in 
all intercourse with our fellows, if we could not rely on the 
word of those who are near us, the wheels of society and 
business would cease to move. This is true in every-day 
affairs as well as when we come to the matter of witness- 
bearing. How the law seeks to prevent lying when the 
property, life, or character is at stake in the court of justice! 
What unspeakable mischief is wrought by the wretch who 
bears false witness. The greatest danger a good man has to 
fear is the tongue of malice or envy or avarice, wagging to 
take away his good name. And no sadder sight in all this 
world is ever seen than a good man sinking under the pois- 
onous wounds of slander. Honest men have often suffered 
extortion and paid large sums rather than to endure the 
pain and injury of a false accusation. Others, braver and 
wiser, have defied the evil one, and, clad in the panoply of 
innocence, have said, " Do your worst. God is my witness 
and judge." Two persons entered the hall of one of the 
noblest and best pastors in this city, asked for a private in- 
terview, told him they had unimpeachable evidence that he 
had been living in secret vice, and unless he would pay them 
a sum they named they would expose him to the world." 
He defied them. They tried their cruel game. Their lying 



340 IREN^US LETTERS. 

conspiracy was exposed. They got into prison, and he came 
forth like gold from the fire. 

As lying begins in cowardice, and is the refuge of one who 
is afraid of the consequences if he tells the truth, so courage 
is a virtue to be taught, and always to be had in honor. Es- 
pecially if the disposition of the child is timid, and he easily 
yields to discouragement and fears. Brace him up. The 
martyr-spirit does not run in the blood of all of us. But the 
youth may be trained to stand fire. The weakling may be- 
come a hero. Boys should grow early into manliness in duty 
and danger, scorning the wrong and sticking to the right, in 
the face of reproach, or loss, or death itself. There is not 
much martyr stuff now to be had. There never was too 
much of it in this world anywhere. But the good citizen 
must have enough of it to uphold the right, and when he has 
done all, to stand. 

These are homely virtues, and honesty is another, of which 
there is an abundant lack in our day, and in all other days 
of which we read in history, sacred or profane. We are not 
wise in saying the former times were better than these. 
Human nature is the same in all ages and places. Probably, 
if you take the world as a whole, there is more good and less 
evil in it than in any age since all flesh corrupted its way in- 
to the earth and the flood came and swept them all away. 
And yet it remains true that the boys of this land, in the 
midst of homes and schools and churches and bibles and 
good books — yes, and good newspapers, too, are growing 
up in great numbers without those safeguards of character 
essential to good citizenship. They may know more of 
books and the world, the\^ may be more refined and manly ; 
but knowledge is not virtue and refinement is not strength. 
The boys need stability and bravery, a moral courage that 
dares to be right, that they may be neither coaxed nor 
driven into the ways of the wicked. In schools and col- 
leges those cowardly vices of the many inflicting bodily and 
mental suffering upon the few and defenceless are vices 
tending to the destruction of every high, manly, and noble 
virtue in a young man's breast. Brutality develops the 



PHILOSOPHERS GETTING KNOWLEDGE. 34 1 

brute, not the man. Chivalry has its highest ambition grati- 
fied in defending the weak and delivering the oppressed. 
The greatest deficiency in the character of the boy and 
young man of to-day is the want of reverence for those who 
are older, wiser, and superior. Indifference to parental au- 
thority, contempt of law and order, a spirit that laughs at 
restraint and scorns to obey, is the feature of the times. But 
this respect for that which is above is the first lesson to be 
taught to the child in the cradle and impressed on him till 
his beard is grown. 

Let every young man seek first and before all else to be a 
true-hearted follower of Him who is the pattern of all that 
is noble, generous, and good. And having enlisted under 
His flag, let him fight manfully the good fight, warring 
against the world, the flesh, and the devil. For such young 
men the country cries out as for volunteers when the enemy 
is at the gate. 



PHILOSOPHERS GETTING KNOWLEDGE. 

When Dr. M'Cosh, now the President of Princeton Col- 
lege, came to this country on a visit for the first time, he 
made a tour of the Western cities. I was his travelling com- 
panion from this city to Niagara and beyond. The day after 
his arrival we took our seats in the cars at the depot of the 
Hudson River Railroad, and when we were out of the city 
and fairly under way. Dr. M'Cosh said to me : 

" Now tell me of the cities of the West I am to see : what 
about Chicago .''" 

"Chicago," I replied, "is the great grain market of this 
country : indeed the greatest in the world, unless Odessa in 
Russia ships more wheat, and of that I am not sure." 

"And Cincinnati," he inquired, "for what is it famous.''" 

" Cincinnati is the greatest pork mart in the United 
States," I said. At this moment the head of a man sitting 
on the seat behind us v/as thrust between our heads, and 



342 IRENyEUS LETTERS. 

opening its mouth the head said " I beg your pardon : Chi- 
cago killed thirty thousand more hogs last year than Cincin- 
nati." It withdrew after this deliverance, and when we had 
recovered from the amusement and surprise this sudden 
communication had produced we resumed our conversation. 
I said to the foreign traveller : 

" Dr. M'Cosh, I had hoped you would make your journey 
through this country, and go home without an occurrence 
like that : and here it has happened in the first half-hour of 
your travels." He smiled, and said he ought to be thankful 
for information, and the manner of giving it was of no im- 
portance. Soon afterwards I had occasion to leave the seat 
for ^ moment, and on returning found Dr. M'Cosh in free 
conversation with the Western man whose head had been 
recently projected between us. So far from having taken 
any offence, Dr. M'Cosh reasoned if the man knew so much 
more than I did about the pork market, he probably knew 
much more on other matters, and so he drew him out. By 
and by they got side by side, and the learned Professor was 
more learned when he had extracted a great amount of know- 
ledge from the stranger. 

John Locke was a great mental philosopher; so is Dr. 
M'Cosh, as the world knows. And Locke was given to ask- 
ing questions of those who knew more than he did of a sub- 
ject he had not studied. Indeed he regarded the conversa- 
tional habit as the great agency in the cultivation of the 
mind. His work on the Human Understanding, though far 
from being a safe or sufficient treatise on mental science, has 
made him famous in the world of thought as one of the great 
teachers of the seventeenth century. When he was asked 
how he had contrived to get a mine of knowledge so rich, ex- 
tensive, and deep, he said that for what he knew he was in- 
debted to his habit of not being ashamed to ask for informa- 
tion, and that he made it a rule all through life to converse 
with all sorts of men on those topics chiefly that formed 
their own particular profession and pursuits. This is evi- 
dently the habit Dr. M'Cosh has. If we would not expect 
to discover it in the case of great mental philosophers, here 



PHILOSOPHERS GETTING KNOWLEDGE. 345 

are two examples of its indulgence and success which may 
well commend it. 

This is quite a different habit from that of asking ques- 
tions simply from idle or impertinent curiosity. Inquisitive- 
ness is a vice, not so bad as stealing, yet resembling it some- 
what. It is prying into other people's affairs, which the in- 
quirer has no business to meddle with, "Just let me ask 
you one question," says this intrusive individual ; and then 
follows a stream of inquiries of no possible use to him who 
asks or him who is compelled for the sake of good-nature 
to answer. Some of the most disagreeable persons in the 
world are these persecuting questioners. Hence the question 
came in former days to mean the examination of a person by 
torture : putting him on the rack or over a fire to extort an- 
swers to questions which the victim was unable or not will- 
ing to give. 

But it is a positive pleasure to every intelligent person to 
impart information to a sincere inquirer after useful know- 
ledge. And this pleasure is the greater when the inquirer is 
the superior in general information. When Dr. M'Cosh 
turned upon the champion of Chicago, and began to ply him 
with questions about the city of whose fair fame he was just- 
ly jealous, the man could see in a moment that his ques- 
tioner with his Scotch accent and handsome, scholarly coun- 
tenance was a man of mind, and being learned wanted to 
learn more : at once he becomes a teacher of the wise, and 
he is proud to tell all he knows. It is an art to extract the 
knowledge such a plain man has. He may be unlettered, 
but he knows his own business, and of course more about it 
than a philosopher could ever get out of the books or 
schools. And it is an attribute of greatness to observe little* 
things, to master minute details. The world is made up of 
small matters,— little grains of sand, — and he who despises 
the'm makes a fatal mistake. The commanding officer who 
lets one point be unguarded may be sure the enemy wilPfind 
it, and tell him so to his cost. Mr. Locke considered the 
conversational capacity to be a discipline and a talent, the 
means to a most important end ; and he pursued it, not with 



344 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

those only who were wiser and better than he, for he was 
one of the most thoroughly and variously read men of his 
day when great learning was common : but he pursued the 
art among the "common people," the people who heard the 
great Teacher gladly. A wise man gathers this varied infor- 
mation into a well-ordered mind, arranges and assimilates it, 
labels and puts it where he can find it when he wants to use 
it, and becomes a practical and useful man whatever may be 
his calling. No one needs this general information more 
than the preacher. For lack of it he fails to make himself 
intelligible or interesting. With it, he reaches the under- 
standings of his people, and even their affections are apt to 
be won when he manifests interest in their affairs, knowledge 
of what they know. How the Master walked into the hearts 
of his hearers by illustrations drawn from their avocations 
and experiences ! He was not abstract nor abstruse, didactic 
nor dogmatic, but he was very interesting. 

Parents make a great mistake when they discourage their 
children in asking questions. True their questions are often 
hard to be answered, and many a child has been snubbed or 
sent away because its question was too much for the parent. 
But the little inquirer should be always treated as a rational 
being, and if the answer is not ready it should be sought and 
found if possible. This is the way to learn. Ask, and it shall 
be given. Seek, and ye shall find. This applies to the high- 
est of all learning — the knowledge of God ; and he that is in 
the lowest class in the school of divine wisdom, by asking 
continually will be filled with the knowledge of Him whom 
to know aright is eternal life. 



ANOTHER WAYMARK IN THE MARCH OF TIME. 

When the Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen was Chancellor 
of the University of the City of New York he called the at- 
tention of the assembled students on New Year's Day, or 
just afterwards, to the " Letter" suggested by the return of 



A WAYMARK IN THE MARCH OF TIME. 345 

that anniversary, which he had been reading in the A^ew York 
Observer, of that week, and he commended the thoughts 
therein to their serious consideration. 

This little incident I now recall, as he mentioned it to me, 
because it is one of the reminders of the march of time, and 
helps me to courage and strength in the work set before 
me. Many teachers, besides that illustrious philanthropist 
and Senator, have told me that this weekly " Letter" is regu- 
larly read to the school, as one of its exercises, and they give 
me such kindly assurances as make it more of a pleasure than 
a task. But it is increasingly wonderful that the reader's 
patience has not long since been exhausted, and in place of 
words of cheer that I have not been greeted as was the te- 
dious speaker who said to the wearied Sunday-school, "And 
what more shall I say.''" " Say Amen," piped a rude boy, 
and the chorus of the school brought the speaker down. If 
any goodly number of my readers would come to my relief 
in this way, I would cheerfully yield the floor. 

We do not make enough of these waymarks on the path- 
way of human life. When I have seen a merchant with ai2 
his clerks and aids of every name engaged in *' taking an ac- 
count of stock," thus ascertaining how he stands with the 
world, what he has sold and what he has on hand, I have 
thought the same process ought to be pursued every year 
with us all as intellectual and spiritual creatures. What have 
we gained and what have we lost in the year just closed ; and 
what do we propose for the year to come ? In fact, the great 
want of the day in which we are living is a habit of reflection, 
or meditation, or any way of thinking at all. We have so 
much to do, that we take no time to think. I have seen a 
line on tombstones taken from a hymn, 

"Stop, poor sinner, stop and THINK;" 

and it would not be an unprofitable inscription for a marble 
set up in the market-place or the street, where we, poor sin- 
ners all, might see it and be reminded of this neglected duty 
and pleasure. 
One of my many duties and pleasures is to write to you 



34^ iren'mus letters. 

once a week. And it fills me with gratitude to God to think 
and know, that year in and year out, so far back as I can as- 
sociate this work with weeks, there has been no week, in 
sickness or in health, in heat or in cold [it is zero now], at 
home or abroad, when I have not been able to keep this vol- 
untary appointment with you. And how great is the sum of 
them ? When the Rev. Dr. Manning of London, a great 
literary and religious worker, was in this country a few years 
ago, he asked me to explain the secret of doing the greatest 
amount of work without sacrifice of life or health. I con- 
densed the answer into two words, 

"Cheerful Industry." 

He thought a moment, repeated them, and said, " It is all 
there, I do believe." It is. Industry without cheerfulness 
wears out, wastes, and perhaps kills ; cheerfulness without 
industry begets idleness; all play with no work brings nothing 
to pass worth living for. But yoke the two into one team, 
and business hums and spins ; the work is done with a will 
and the joy of the craftsman is that of him who taketh great 
spoil. For there is no higher intellectual and moral enjoy- 
ment in this working world than in duty done and well 
done, and then paid for. In such doing there is great 
reward. So God has appointed our lot and task, giving 
to each of us a job to do, according to our ability and 
his will, with the price marked on the piece. In part he 
pays as we go, and the remainder is laid up where neither 
rust nor thieves will hinder us from entering on full posses- 
sion when "the whole world turns to coal." Mr. Lincoln, 
when asked what he was going to do next, replied, " Only 
keep pegging away." And that is just about all that any of 
us can do, with the work God has set us to accomplish. 

A year begun teaches us to count the value of days and 
then of hours. Men in business, men who have hard and 
much work in trade or professions, often plead the want of 
time in excuse for their neglect of reading or writing or mak- 
ing social calls, or taking service upon themselves in the 



A WA YMARK IN THE MARCH OF TIME. 347 

church or society. But there is just exactly time enough in 
each twenty-four hours for all the duties of that day ! Let 
each have its place and time, and all are done when the 
hours are past. An author writes six hours a day, and in 
six weeks a book is made that is the talk of the reading 
world. Walter Scott wrote one of his remarkable three- 
volume novels in six weeks. And the work was not done in 
a slovenly manner ; but very carefully, authorities cited and 
quotations verified. You write one hour a day, and make 
five manuscript pages in that time ; at the end of three hun- 
dred working days, or in a year, you have piled up fifteen 
hundred pages easily, making two handsome printed volumes ! 
Read thirty pages every day, and in one year you have read 
ten thousand nine hundred and fifty pages ! This done, you 
ought to be much wiser and better than you now are, and 
this I say without any insinuation that you are not very wise 
and good now. 

It is not worth while to reduce one's self to a living ma- 
chine, grinding out life in one uniform process. Variety is 
the spice of life. In reading, writing, playing, it is better to 
vary the exercise, as a wise man in health varies his diet, and 
finds enjoyment and advantage in a change. All that I am 
advising is that the hours of the days of the coming year 
shall be occupied, all of them, in that which maketh rich or 
wise or good, and addeth no sorrow. There is so much to 
do. A world all about us in want and much of it in misery. 
One half of the race crying out to the other half Give, Give ! 
And the Infinite God and Father of us all calling to us from 
the skies, "Freely ye have received, freely give." I have 
heard of infidel teachers who say that Christians would be 
always miserable if they really and truly believed in the end- 
less misery of the wicked. Well, how does it make you feel, 
O unbeliever, to know that millions of your fellow-men are 
now suffering in hunger and cold and wretchedness inde- 
scribable, and near enough to you to feel your hand if 
stretched out to save ? Does it make you miserable to know 
that such misery groans for pity at your own door ? 

We might make the year 1885 the annus mirabilis, the 



348 IREN^US LETTERS. 

Year Wonderful, if we all would do only our simple duty to 
our neighbors. 

It is gladness to know that each year brings us nearer to 
the Good Time Coming. What though the King delays his 
chariot wheels ! He will come, and these mountains and 
hills of misery and sin will flow down at his presence into 
rivers of peace and plenty, and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
away. Even so, come. Lord Jesus, come quickly ! ! 

i' Fly swiftly round, ye wheels of time, 
And bring the welcome day." 



OVERTAXING THE BRAIN. 

When I learned the Catechism in childhood, an answer 
to what is required in the sixth commandment was impressed 
on my infant mind. The commandment is "Thou shalt not 
kill," and the Catechism said this command requires "the 
use of all lawful endeavors to preserve our own lives and the 
lives of others." 

There is no question among Christian people as to the sin 
of suicide, There have been moralists who boldly teach the 
circumstances in which it is right to take one's life, run away 
from the post which God has appointed, rush unbidden into 
the presence of the Supreme Judge, abandon every trust and 
duty, and plunge into the dark abyss of eternity, with the 
guilt of murder on the soul. 

It is probable that very few persons of Christian principles 
thus defy God, except when reason has left its throne and 
the mind is in anarchy. We call that state insanity. He 
was insane, unsound ; and we see the duty of praying God 
daily and hourly that we may have the use of reason, for 
with it we go astray too often and too far : without it, wreck 
and ruin are assured. 

But with the knowledge of this fact that we are by the 
rule of God to use all lawful endeavors to preserve our own 
and others' lives, the truth is that we are far more reckless 



OVERTAXING THE BRAIN. 349 

of our lives than we are of our money. To get and keep 
thai, we "tug and toil and strive," eat the bread of care and 
often waste and destroy health in the pursuit of wealth we 
cannot enjoy because we have ruined health in its acquisi- 
tion. 

I wrote in one " Letter" of being in Spain. At the same 
table where I met the American lady who described the bull- 
fights was a gentleman from New York, who " talked out loud 
to himself " while eating his dinner. No other outward mani- 
festation of infirmity was given, while his countenance and 
appetite encouraged the belief that he was eccentric only. 
But inquiry brought out the fact that he was a gentleman 
from New York who had overworked himself in business, 
and was now said to be " off the handle." There are thou- 
sands of wealthy men in a similar condition of mind and 
body to-day. Their ranks are recruited by volunteers as fast 
as they die at the top and go to Europe or the grave. And 
I was led to look at the beginning of these troubles by an 
extract in a late number of the Observer from Dr. Crichton 
Browne's report addressed to the Education Department of 
the British Government. The facts are very startling, and 
they apply with intenser force to the American people than 
to the British. We are a far more driving, pushing, and 
pulling people than they. We never have learned, and never 
will, to take things moderately. Repose is essential to the 
finest character of an Englishman. Activity is the beauty of 
an American. The Britisher is supposed to be calm. The 
Yankee is known to be always on the go. Hence the facts 
which Dr. Browne presents are of greater value on this than 
on the other side of the sea. He finds that sleeplessness is 
largely on the increase over there. No one doubts that it is 
sadly true of us here. He discovered by careful inquiry that 
school children are sleepless because they are so excited 
during the day in learning their lessons. Many talk in their 
sleep about them. Others not only talk, but walk in their 
sleep. And the extent of this great evil is found to be 
greater the further the inquiry is pushed. It is a dreadful 
evil, which it is next to impossible to remedy or alleviate. 



350 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

Why? Because parents and children and teachers prefer 
the evil to the simple remedy. All the three classes just 
named will not use the means to preserve their own lives 
and the lives of others. Parents complain of the slow prog- 
ress of their children, and wish them to be crowded and 
crammed. Children do not know the danger, and their 
ambition is roused to excel. Teachers stimulate the school 
as their obvious duty, and rejoice when the scholar at the 
risk of his life makes a perfect recitation. Studies are mul- 
tiplied immoderately. Books are taken home at night, and 
the child is poring over them when he or she ought to be 
in bed and asleep. The harp of a thousand strings is out of 
tune. Discord reigns in the whole inner department. And 
the primary education of nearly the whole of our people is 
given on these high-pressure principles, I'egardless of the 
inevitable consequences of this sin and folly. Thus in early 
life the seeds of future mischief are sown. The overwrought 
brain of the child develops its natural results when the man 
assumes his position in the national army of working citizens. 
He may be in business, trade, letters ; he may be a pastor or 
a bank president : he has in him the taint of that disease tliat 
kept him awake o' nights when he was a schoolboy. The 
visions that haunted his sleepless pillow then, come back 
now, and if he gets asleep his dreams are of the multiplica- 
tion-table. Probably his digestion is out of order, and he 
never thinks that his head and his stomach have any affini- 
ties. If he is a minister he has prayers made for him and 
takes a vacation. He recuperates and resumes, but like the 
animal who loves to recline in the mixture of earth and 
water, he is soon back in his old ways. It is so with women 
worn with cares of housekeeping, the wives of farmers and 
others who have hard work to do. Ambitious to save and 
lay up, unable or unwilling to have " help," worried out of 
their lives, they go to bed tired in body and depressed in 
spirit. They cannot sleep. Often they say " I was too tired 
to sleep." It was nervous excitement. By and by it is nerv- 
ous prostration. And then the end is at hand. The shat- 
tered harp may be repaired. The old house may be patched 



A TRAGEDY IN THE " TOMBS:' 35 1 

up. But neither can ever be made as good as new. The 
boy was the father of the man. What was sown in the flesh 
grew up and brought forth fruit after its kind. 

A few simple rules for the regulation of a child's life while 
at school, if faithfully followed, would train up a generation 
with sounder minds in sounder bodies than their fathers and 
their mothers have. i. Let six hours a day be the limit of 
school hours and study. 2. Allow no study in the evening. 
3. Make lively exercise and play in the open air to be re- 
quired as regularly as the school. 4. While the school edu- 
cation is in progress, let the child, whether boy or girl, be 
restrained from evening parties and public amusements that 
excite and keep them up late and awake when they ought to 
sleep. 

As to giving advice to grown-up people, business men 
and professional men, it is a mere waste of good ink and 
paper. When Ephraim is joined to idols, you may let him 
alone. The man who overworks his brain in making money 
or sermons is already off the balance, and' therefore impene- 
trable by the power of argument. You may frighten him, 
but you cannot convince him. Perhaps he will do more 
work in a short life than many who live longer, but like a 
candle burning at both ends he will go out in the middle. 



A TRAGEDY IN THE "TOMBS." 

It is a trite but true saying, that truth is stranger than fiction. 
A few hours in the court-rooms of a great city will make reve- 
lations more remarkable than the wildest fancies of romance 
suggest. There is in this city a prison and court-house 
called the Tombs, because its architecture is drawn from a 
mausoleum in the land of Egypt. It is gloomy on the out- 
side, gloomier within. Duty sometimes, curiosity oftener, 
has led me within its walls, even into its cells, as when I was 
shut in with Babe, a pirate of renown, who was hung on an 
island in the Bay. I have been in the court-room when very 



352 IREMJEUS LETTERS. 

distinguished prisoners have been sentenced. It is a curious 
study. It must be a morbid taste that can find enjoyment in 
it. There are educated persons who attend every execution 
to which they can gain admission. And there is a fascina- 
tion in the horrible that irresistibly attracts some unfortu- 
nate minds. 

The sorrows of the lowly and poor, the struggles of the 
wretched with sin and misery, the wages of vice and the 
tragedies of broken hearts and wasted lives are displayed as 
on a stage every day in the court-rooms. Last week one was 
brought out having in it elements of great dramatic interest, 
but the more simply and naturally the story is told, the bet- 
ter will the terrible moral of it be seen. 

Some fourteen years ago an Irishman came from his native 
isle to this city, bringing with him his wife and four daugh- 
ters, all quite young. He found employment at first, and got 
on comfortably. They must have been a family of more 
intelligence than many of the poor immigrants who find a 
refuge in this country when hunger drives them from their 
own. But when the burden of his family became too heavy 
for the unprincipled wretch to bear, coward as he was, he 
deserted them, fled to parts unknown, and they have never 
heard a word from him since. Then the mother succeeded 
in getting the children into various asylums, and she went 
back to Ireland. It is not unusual for Irish parents to im- 
pose their children in this way on charity. They get them 
well cared for in the winter at these homes, and take them 
out in the spring sometimes, or when they are able to earn 
something. The asylum is allowed a certain sum per week 
for the children's board, and as this sum is more than the 
cost, the more they have the more money they make. 

Several years went on, and these children were growing up 
without any knowledge of the whereabouts of their mother. 
When the oldest daughter left the asylum, she managed by 
dint of industry, energy, and courage to get knowledge enough 
to enable her to become a teacher. Then with a noble spirit 
she took a room and gathered into it her sisters, and finding 
work for them to do they lived comfortably. There is some- 



A TRAGEDY IN THE '' TOMBS." 353 

thing very fine in the heroic conduct of this oldest girl. It 
is strange that two such sneaks as the father and mother 
couid be the parents of such a family of daughters. Now 
they were all earning more than their daily food, and they 
sent to Ireland for their mother to come back and set up a 
home once more. This was a sad mistake, but it was nature 
and filial affection. The mother came, and became a drunk- 
ard. There is the bane of life among the lowly. A mother 
and a drunkard among these four poor girls struggling to 
make a home for themselves and her. Of course a drunken 
mother is a living monster. There is no terror like it in this 
world of sin and misery. She would have the money the 
girls earned and spend it for liquor. She went to the school 
where the oldest daughter was an able and respected teacher, 
and made a scene that covered the teacher with confusion 
and shame. This was repeated so often that the noble young 
woman was obliged to resign her place, driven out of it by 
the beastly conduct of her own mother. Then want added 
its terrors to this wretched household. But for the one 
dreadful vice of the mother, they might have been happy, in 
their humble way, with industry, health, and peace. Now the 
furniture ha .'. to be sold, one piece after another, which the 
girls had bought with their hard-earned money. The walls 
and floor were stripped, and the mother drank it all, except 
what little was spent to keep them from starving. Can there 
be deeper distress than this ? 

At last, when all hope had perished, and it had become 
impossible to bear it any longer, the daughters were com- 
pelled to seek the protection of law against their own mother. 
They laid the case before one of the justices. The mother 
was arrested and brought into court in the Tombs. The 
heart-broken daughters told their sad story of suffering, 
cruelty, and shame. The mother turned upon them and de- 
nounced them as vile women, thus going down one step 
lower in infamy than we had thought it possible before. 
Their character was investigated, and it was easily proved by 
their neighbors that they were excellent young women, 
worthy of all respect and confidence, whose young lives had 

23 



354 IREN^US LETTERS. 

been blighted by their own mother. She was sent to prison 
for six months. At the end of that time, perhaps before, she 
will come out to renew a course of vice and wretchedness 
which will bring these daughters into sorrow and suffering 
unspeakable. 

In this sad story I see a specimen of parental meanness 
and baseness rarely equalled even among the people of which 
these parents are a type. Can a mother forsake her own 
child } Here first the father, then the mother, forsake four 
daughters, leaving them to the cold charity of the world. 
The father is probably a drunkard, certainly the mother is, 
therefo7'e the last drop of parental love is expelled from the 
heart, and even a mother becomes a wolf, destroying the 
children she would otherwise cherish and protect. Takeout 
this vice, and here in this humble family were all the elements 
of comfort and enjoyment. With this vice, the home is the 
abode of woe too grievous to be borne. 

But there is a meaner and a baser person than this wretched 
woman. When we see and know the power of the passion for 
strong drink, we can pity while we abhor the mother who 
robs her children that she may buy the liquor she loves more 
than she loves the children that drew their life from her 
bosom. We pity her. But for the man who daily ministers 
to her dread appetite and for the sake of a few cents makes 
her a drunken demon to carry hell into her household — for 
such a man there is no pity in a human breast. For him 
there is a fearful looking for of judgment! Each piece of 
silver in his till is coined out of the sorrows of orphans. 
When he counts his ill-gotten gains, he counts the tears and 
.sobs of virtue hungry and in rags. When he drives his fast 
horse on the road, every foot-fall tramples on hearts he has 
crushed. May God have pity on him ere he comes among 
those the smoke of whose torments ascendeth up forever 
and ever! 

When this drunken mother was sent to prison the feelings 
of her daughters broke forth in sobs that made the court- 
room like a funeral. Even then they would have taken her 
back, and hoping against hope, would have made one more 



THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN CHURCH LIFE. 355 

vain attempt to save her from herself. But it could not be 
and ought not to be. And thus ended the tragedy in the 
Tombs. The mother went to her own place, and the poor 
daughters to their ruined, desolate home. 

Is there no balm in Gilead, no help for such woe .'' Is human 
nature so lost to all redeeming influences that tragedies like 
this must be performed continually in a Christian city.-* Is 
there no eye to pity, no arm to save.'' 



THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN CHURCH LIFE. 

Circumstances alter cases. There are diversities of gifts, 
opportunities, and duties. And what is very desirable and 
important and even necessary, in one place and under one set 
of circumstances, may be quite objectionable in others. We 
must not judge other people by ourselves, or undertake to 
measure their corn in our bushel. 

The rural church rejoices in being free from many of the 
perplexing questions of city church life, and perhaps it is just 
as true that the country parish has its difficulties of which 
they in town know nothing. In the country where the people 
are for the most engaged in similar pursuits and are nearly 
all on the same social plane, the unity of feeling and concert 
of action are more easily secured. The power and happiness 
of the church as a body and its members as individuals are 
far greater than they would be if they were strangers to each 
other personally, or had notions of social distinctions that 
promote envy and discontent. 

Dr. Franz Delitzsch, a very learned German Professor, has 
made a small and intensely interesting Book on Jewish Arti- 
san Life in the time of our Lord on earth. He has drawn 
from the oldest records and made no guess-work. He says 
truly, and the statement is worthy of being very studiously 
pondered : 

" Though all work which supplies a real want is honorable, and though 
the Iionor of each workman is meted out both by God and man, according 



35^ IREN^US LETTERS. 

to the divine standard of the moral and religious feeling and line of action 
connected with his work, yet ever and everywhere among mankind has there 
been a difference in the estimation in which different kinds of work are held; 
and this difference is legitimate so far as it proceeds from a correct point of 
view and is measured by a just scale." 

As a fact in history tliis is true, and it will doubtless be 
true of all time to come. 

Now we must take human nature as it is, and things as 
they are, and then try to make them as much better as we 
can. In every large town, not in the great cities only, but in 
prosperous villages and manufacturing communities, whither 
young people are drawn continually from the country in 
quest of a livelier life than in the rural districts, are hundreds 
of thousands of souls for whom somebody ought to care. 
Who does care for them ? Whose duty is it to look after 
these scattered lambs among wolves? The church is "the 
mother of us all," and has a divine right and duty in this 
matter that she is far from feeling in the full scope and im- 
port of the obligation. Within the reach and sweep of each 
organized church there are many young people and some 
families who, by stress of circumstances, are cut off from the 
pleasures and advantages of social life. " Where shall I spend 
my evenings.'*" is a question asked a thousand times and un- 
answered. Happy is he or she who can find the parlors of a 
Christian Association of young people easily accessible. In- 
estimable are the benefits which they have conferred on the 
homeless in large cities. Yet what are they among so many? 
How very, very few of the youth of our land are able to en- 
joy the high privileges of these useful institutions ! The 
church is the divine organization to bring the means of good, 
the privileges and advantages of the gospel to every son and 
daughter of man. And each one of these churches is en- 
dowed with all the appliances and facilities for making itself 
a resting-place, a refuge, a house for the soul, a home and 
haven for them that are in want of society, friends, and 
pleasure. 

If I had a church and lecture-room in a large city or town, 
I would aim at the widest development of the social principle, 



THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN CHURCH LIFE. 357 

working upon it to make the people identified with each 
other, as partakers one with another in a common cause, a 
common interest and a common salvation. And this should 
not interfere in the smallest degree with the lines of society 
which are no more to be trampled on than the rules of busi- 
ness or the pursuits of trade. Society regulates its intercourse 
by the tastes, education, and ability of people to meet its de- 
mands and fulfil its obligations. Religion or church-mem- 
bership does not require you to make a companion of one 
whose tastes and pursuits render you and him uncongenial 
and perhaps repulsive. He does not find enjoyment in your 
society, nor do you in his. But it is his duty to be kind to 
you, and whenever he can he must do you good. Your 
Christian friendship includes many whom you should not 
make partners in your business or companions of your chil- 
dren. And this is the cement which the gospel supplies for 
social life. It does not break up the conditions, but it does 
modify the feelings and change the action of those who are 
brought under its power and are then so situated that they 
may be mutually helpful. Thus, to go back to the church and 
lecture-room, I would make them the Christian home into 
which at all times the saint or the sinner, the old or the 
young, might enter and find light, warmth, and rest. The 
lecture-room or vestry or chapel, no matter by what name 
called, should be open and free from early morning until nearly 
bedtime at night. It should be furnished with good books 
and papers, and the people should be encouraged to come 
and use them freely. Every evening one hour, at least^ 
should be made cheerful and profitable by some public exer- 
cise, conducted by some intelligent person, the pastor or some 
other selected by him for this service. It might take the 
form of a musical exercise twice a week. Pleasant and use- 
ful readings might be enjoyed. The pastor would always 
give one lecture or more in the course of every week. A 
debate, or conference, might profitably employ another even- 
ing. But besides this public exercise there would be time 
before and after it for that social intercourse which ought to 
make this room a delightful resort for those who, having no 



358 IREN^US LETTERS. 

home-life of their own, should find the church their safe and 
pleasant retreat. The faithful and wise pastor organizes his 
working men and women into a recruiting corps, who explore 
the dwellings within comfortable reach of his church, and 
bring into the house of the Lord whomsoever they find in need 
of such a home. To them they offer one of the greatest lux- 
uries and blessings which they can enjoy. Many are now 
longing for such an invitation, and it is not rash to say they 
are perishing for want of it. Because no man cares for their 
souls, they seek those other resorts which the devil never 
fails to set open with all the meretricious arts and allurements 
which brighten and gild the pathway to everlasting ruin. 
Why not ? They are social, gregarious, and vivacious. Will 
they sit solitary in the cold bedroom of a boarding-house, 
when a saloon or a play-house is just around the corner .? 
There is wisdom in winning souls. The most vital element 
in the soul is that which makes the whole world kin. We 
are all of one blood. The social tie is around us all. And 
right along that line the church should work to keep its hold 
on the young and save them from destruction. " Lo, all these 
things worketh God oftentimes with man to bring back his 
soul from the pit." 

Thus each individual church, whatever its name, should 
work the ground it covers. Parish lines may be drawn to 
suit the exigencies, only let it be seen that the whole ground 
is covered, and all have the offer of friendly care from some 
of Christ's friends. We must get into the spirit of those teach- 
ings of the Master in the latter part of the twenty-fifth chap- 
ter of the gospel by Matthew. The church ought to work 
for the world's salvation, by caring for each individual soul. 



THE THERMOMETER OF THE CHURCH. 

The past winter was very severe in this latitude, and one 
month longer than usual. Out of my library window, and 
where I can read it from my chair, hangs a thermometer 



THE THERMOMETER OF THE CHURCH. 359 

which has been watched often and anxiously through these 
weary and dreary months. Is there no indication of warmer 
weather? Is it as cold this morning as it was yesterday? 
So we kept watching and waiting, until at last the spring has 
come in its beauty, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the 
land. 

I have heard the weekly prayer-meeting called the ther- 
mometer of the church. It is said that the numbers attending 
it indicate the degree of spiritual warmth pervading the con- 
gregation. A crowded room would be an infallible sign of 
revival, as an empty one shows the state of religion to be 
very low — below zero. 

A distinction is to be made between duties and privileges. 
All privileges are not duties, and all duties are not privileges. 
It is a duty to meet for public worship on the Sabbath-day. 
It is not a duty to attend church three times a day, though 
under some circumstances it maybe a privilege. If our peo- 
ple would attend public worship in the middle of the day 
and spend the rest of it, including the evening, in the relig- 
ious instruction of the family and in the culture of the soul, 
the Sabbath would be more profitable than it is to those who 
go to church three times and to two or three meetings be- 
sides. There is a religious dissipation to be shunned as not 
good for the bodj^ or the soul. The tendency, however, is 
the other way. And it is so hard to persuade men to do their 
duty, it is hardly worth while to caution them not to overdo. 

The prayer-meeting is one of the privileges of the Chris- 
tian life. A duty also when circumstances do not hinder 
attendance, but it is a great privilege ; and there is far more 
hope of inducing people to go to it as a privilege to be en- 
joyed than as a duty to be done. And just here the pastor 
makes a mistake, when he chides and rebukes and scolds the 
people for not coming to the prayer-meeting. He fails to 
impress their consciences with a sense of duty, and he oflfers 
no particular evidence that they will find it to be a privilege. 
But if he is successful in making the service attractive and 
enjoyable, its fame will quickly pervade the church, and 
others will come and sit in heavenly places with great delight. 



360 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

To indicate warmth in the church, the meeting itself must be 
warm. In the heat of summer a pastor in the country asked 
one of his people why he did not come to the prayer-meet- 
ing. And when the man gave the heat of the weather as the 
reason, the minister said to him, "If you have found any 
colder place than our prayer- meeting, I wish you would tell 
me where it is." We know what is meant by spiritual cold- 
ness or warmth, death or life, and we use these terms freely 
to express our sensations or want of sensation. We know 
what a cold meeting is, and we ought to know what a warm 
one is. And as it is often hard to tell which is effect and 
which is cause, so we may not be able to say whether a warm 
prayer-meeting draws the crowd or the crowd makes the 
meeting warm. It is well to warm those who do come, and 
their warmth will attract others. Scattered coals expire, but 
together they burn. And that is the way to build up the 
prayer-meeting. I would not assume that every one who is 
absent is in neglect of duty, or in a state of sin. If this were 
a fact, the absentees might be fit subjects for discipline. But 
we could find nothing in the Word of God or the rules of 
the church on which to rest the charge of neglect of Chris- 
tian duty or indulgence in known sin. We must make the 
meetings so attractive and so useful that people cannot afford 
to stay away. This can be done. It often is done, and the 
soul, refreshed and delighted, sings: 

" I have been there and still would go: 
• 'Tis like a little heaven below." 

It is not unusual to speak very slightingly of the prayers 
and talks of unlearned laymen, and to say that meetings in 
which they exercise their gifts are not for edification. There 
are weak brethren who ought to keep silence, and a judicious 
pastor finds it one of his delicate duties to suppress such 
men — men who want to talk all the more because they have 
nothing to say worth hearing. But there are very few of 
these irrepressibles. They do sometimes spoil a meeting. 
Yet good sense and a little tact on the part of the minister 
will regulate the matter, and the patience of the people will 



THE THERMOMETER OF THE CHURCH. 36 1 

not be often or sorely tried. More Christians are afraid to 
take any part in a meeting than there are to make themselves 
disagreeable by their weakness or eccentricities. And when 
the church with great unanimity throws its whole heart and 
soul into the prayer-meeting, the tide of good feeling and 
strong emotion sweeps away all these little objections, and 
in the enjoyment of the hour the saints of the Lord find 
great enjoyment. 

Thus prayer is answered while the people are praying. 
They get the blessing at once. All spiritual good comes 
from the Spirit of God, and if quickened religious life is a 
blessing, it is the gift of the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer. 
And this is the greatest and best influence of a prayer-meet- 
ing. We need such helps to holy living. We do not make 
religion the chief concern as we should ; we make our busi- 
ness the first and principal thing, and well for us it is that 
Sunday comes once a week and compels us to shut up shop. 
And if we would in the middle of every week spend an 
evening in social prayer and conference it would be a decided 
help in the religious life, one of the powerful means of grace. 
Of course every Christian has his private hours of conversa- 
tion with God and his own soul, his daily walk with God, his 
meditation with his heart on his bed or in his closet. But 
we are social beings. It is not good for man to be alone all 
the time. There is help, stimulus, and strength in praying 
together, singing praise together, and in testifying of what 
God has done for our souls. Never let us get to be so 
genteel or respectable that we shall feel such communion 
to be common or unclean. God has cleansed it, and we may 
not despise or undervalue it or refuse to enjoy it. The aris- 
tocracy in his kingdom is composed of those who pray best 
and most. They live near the throne. They always go to 
prayer-meeting. They know the power of prayer. The salt 
of the church is in the walk and prayer of these disciples 
whose hearts burn within them as they pursue the journey of 
life with Jesus as their constant companion. 

Therefore I magnify the prayer-meeting. It is indeed a 
thermometer by which the spiritual temperature of the 



362 IREN^US LETTERS. 

church is often correctly measured, but it is itself a heater 
from which warmth is radiated through the body of the 
church. It acts and is reacted upon. It is a strong support 
of the pastor: warming his heart and holding up his hands 
when they are ready to hang down. It is the life-blood of 
the system, permeating by its sweet influence the remotest 
extremities, and filling with the graces of the Holy Spirit the 
great central heart. 

No church can afford to dispense with this service in the 
midst of the week. Call it by what name you please, and 
conduct it according to circumstances and your taste, but by 
all means gather yourselves in the place where prayer is wont 
to be made. Get nearer to the throne of divine grace. 
Plead the precious promise of Christ's presence. And you 
.will say " it is good to be here." 



THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 

SOME THOUGHTS CONCERNING BURIALS. 

Mr. James Brown, the head of the great banking-house 
of Brown Brothers & Co., said to me when he was more 
than eighty years of age : 

" I am thinking of writing an article for your paper." 

As I was not aware that he was in the habit of writing for 
the press, his remark gave me equal surprise and pleasure, 
and I replied : 

" I hope you will carry out your good intention without 
delay." He continued : 

" I want to write against the great extravagance of fune- 
rals in the city. It is a bad example set by the rich, and a 
burden upon the poor." 

Mr. Brown did not carry out his good intention, but his 
funeral was an example of simplicity in perfect harmony 
with the views and feelings he had often expressed. Some 
of the most wealthy citizens have given directions that their 
funerals should not be marked by any needless expense. 



THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 363 

And that they might not be charged with meanness, they 
have directed that the sum which would have been spent on 
their funeral should be given to charitable objects. One 
rich man on the occasion of a funeral in his family, avoiding 
all extravagance, sent a hundred dollars to each clergyman 
who was present in the church, whether officiating or not, 
and in this way he distributed at least a thousand dollars. 

When one is in great sorrow, the feelings rather than 
the judgment are apt to control the action. It is grateful to 
the heart in grief to expend care and thought and treasure 
upon the object that has been removed. And sometimes it 
seems as though the mourners thought the depth and sin- 
cerity of their sorrow would be estimated by the amount of 
money they expended upon the burial. This is a sad mis- 
take, for the heart that is truly sorrowful on account of the 
death of a dear friend, does not expend itself in such trifles 
as the ornaments of a funeral. 

In the country the beautiful custom of going to the grave 
with the friends and assisting in the last rites, prevails and 
ought never to be given up. It is a tribute of affection and 
respect, a token of good neighborhood that tends to make 
"the whole world kin." It is a touching and mournfully 
pleasing sight when a long procession, carriages of all sorts, 
follows the remains of one well known, and respectfully 
gathers about the grave as the dust returns to its native 
dust. Some of the earliest recollections of my life are of 
long funerals making their slow journey to the rural church- 
yard. But in the city, funerals are so many and the distance 
to cemeteries is so great that it is now in most cases more 
convenient to have the funeral services public, and the 
burial private. This is far more in harmony with the feel- 
ings of the bereaved, and it may be said that it is the com- 
mon practice now. 

Funerals on Sunday are by no means so frequent as they 
formerly were. It once was the practice of some to hasten 
a funeral by a day or two, or delay it as long for the sake of 
having it on Sunday. This saves a day for business. But it 
entails an amount of labor that should not be done on the 



364 IREM^US LETTERS. 

Lord's Day. It imposes a heavy burden on ministers, some 
of whom very properly decline to officiate at them on that 
day unless it is a work of necessity. 

The tendency to have funerals as soon after the death as 
is decent is on the increase. There are good reasons for 
delay rather than haste. It is not human, it is unnatural to 
be in a hurry about putting our dead out of sight. But I 
do not think mistakes are made, and persons buried in a 
state of trance and supposed to be dead. Now and then a 
notice is made in the newspapers of a person being buried 
in this state, and a harrowing tale is told of the dreadful 
discovery. I have been in the habit of investigating each 
one of these reports, and IN every case they have been 
found to be false. In some cases they are fabrications, 
without the slightest foundation in fact. Sometimes a 
young man out of mere wickedness invents the tale and 
sends it to a distant newspaper. To make a sensation it is 
indiscreetly published, and is copied into a thousand papers 
within a week. When its falsehood is exposed not one in a 
hundred of these papers will publish the denial. And so it 
comes to pass that tens of thousands of people never hear 
the story denied and receive it as true. In some countries, 
as in Germany, there are cemeteries in which is a house of 
rest and safety, where the dead are laid until undoubted 
evidences of death appear. I visited one of these in Halle : 
in one chamber was a nice couch on which the body was 
laid and kept at a proper temperature. Thimbles were put 
on the fingers, and from these a delicate wire extended 
through the wall into an adjoining room, where was a 
watcher night and day. The slightest movement of one of 
the fingers would set a bell ringing. About seventy per- 
sons every year, more than one a week, are thus tested, and 
the old sexton told me that not one had ever been found 
to be living. I inquired if such arrangements were common. 
He said they were, and he had heard a rumor that once 
upon a time a life had been saved at Erfurt ; but it was only 
a rumor — he had never known an instance. A writer in one 
of the New York daily papers most foolishly and inconsid- 



THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 365 

erately speaks of the " appalling frequency" of premature 
burials. There is no frequency at all. He says that the 
writer of a paper before the French Academy estimates the 
number at one in every five thousand. This is idle talk, 
merely sensational, not sensible. I do not say that such 
cases never do occur, but they are so exceedingly im- 
probable and rare that no living person need have the 
slightest apprehension. There have been 227,000 interments 
in Greenwood Cemetery, and not one person has been even 
suspected of being buried prematurely. The nearest that 
any one ever came to it was in the case of a woman who, 
after being on ice four days, was laid in the receiving-tomb 
and watched a week and then buried. I made application 
to the comptroller of Greenwood Cemetery, and these facts 
were furnished to me officially. Had I extended the search 
into the records of all the cemeteries in and around the city 
of New York I should not find the least item of evidence to 
prove the correctness of the Frenchman's foolish estimate. 

Burial should never take place until certain infallible signs 
of death are manifest. These will be waited for by all sen- 
sible people, and apprehension on the subject among the 
living should be dismissed as unreasonable. 

It is urged in favor of cremation that it leaves no chance 
for premature burial. But the alternative is very painful, 
and no sane person would burn the body of a friend to pre- 
vent the burial before death. There are sanitary considera- 
tions in favor of cremation, and there is nothing to me re- 
pulsive in the idea of giving the dead body to be burned. 
Ashes to ashes, or dust to dust, it is all the same so the 
spirit is with God who gave it. But there is in the heart of 
humanity refined by the Christian religion a sentiment that 
finds pleasure in cherishing the grave of one loved in life, 
and that sentiment will not be satisfied with a vase of ashes. 
The graveyard where our friends are sleeping is invested 
with a sacredness that no columbarium ever had, though 
the urns of twenty generations were ranged along its walls. 



366 IREN^US LETTERS. 



THE MAIDEN OF THE MOUNTAIN AND HER 
ORGAN. 

While I was in the mountains for the summer, not many 
years ago, I was in the habit of strolling off from the board- 
ing-house and passing much of the day in the woods. There 
is more enjoyment, and profit too, in the solitude of a great 
forest than the world of trade will readily believe. 

It is not lonesome to be in the woods alone. Trees are 
good company. They are very suggestive companions. No 
speech nor language, their voice is not heard. But they are 
eloquent of Him who spreads his arms over all his works, 
shelters and saves. I love trees. There was a grove of 
mighty pines near the home of my childhood, dense and 
solemn, cool in the noon of the hottest summer day, and 
there, before I was in my teens, I often went and sat on the 
moss, listening to the sighing of the air as it moved among 
the upper branches of those ancient trees. There is a psalm- 
ody in pines, peculiar to them, and heard by those who do 
not need imagination to furnish soul-music in the forests. 
The people who were buried in Stoke Pogis graveyard and 
have their immortal epitaph in Gray's Elegy would have 
heard the psalm of the pines had they dwelt with me by the 
side of this almost sacred grove. It seemed to me like being 
in a church. "The groves were God's first temples." And 
as in his house we often form holy and lofty purposes, so at 
the foot of those trees, as I now distinctly remember, there 
came into my child-spirit, beneath the overshadowing pines 
and the blue skies above them, longings for what I have 
ever been striving, with God's help, to be and do. 

But I was now in the mountains, and wandering along the 
rough roads made barely passable for teams dragging wood, 
and for the lumbermen to get into and out of the forest. 
The settlers were few and far between ; but there were some, 
and their rude houses could be seen in the midst of little 



THE MAIDEN AND HER ORGAN. 367 

clearings from the valleys below. One of these attracted 
my attention and — but I will tell you the story, for this is the 
home of the mountain maiden whose music you are to hear 
or hear of. 

Her parents were of the same class and type with the other 
dwellers in the mountains— hard-working people, of little 
learning and less religion. In the summer season there was 
a district school kept going for a few months, and the chil- 
dren of the hills attended when they could spare the time. 
At this school our maiden, whose fit name was Ruth, ac- 
quired some elementary education. Thoughtful above her 
years, inclined in childhood to be alone while other children 
were at play, she would often take her book or sewing and 
sit for hours at the foot of a tree, unmindful of the world 
about her — even then, though she knew it not, communing 
with her own heart. The nearest church was five miles 
away. None of the mountain people ever thought of going, 
and it was very true that no one in the valley cared for the 
souls among the hills. Ruth and one or two of the neigh- 
bors' children having heard at school of the music in the 
church and what a fine treat it was to hear it, went ofT to it 
one summer Sunday morning. It was a long walk, but they 
were young and strong, and they enjoyed it. A new life 
dawned on Ruth that summer Sunday morning. She knew 
that she loved to hear the birds singing, and the sound of 
falling water gave her pleasure as the streams tumbled from 
ledge to ledge on their broken journeys to the sea. But she 
did not know that the buds and the brooks were making 
music, part of the anthems of nature, the melodies of the 
great world in which she lived. She had never heard an or- 
gan nor a choir of singers. The music woke unknown 
chords of gladness in her soul. At first she wanted to fly. 
Then it began to reach the deeper depths of her nature, and 
she was very sober — sad perhaps. She bowed her head, and 
the tears rolled down her cheeks. The prayers and the 
preaching wrought a wonderful influence on the heart and 
mind of the girl. She knew before that she had a soul ; but 
the thoughts of its capacities for being and doing, the great 



368 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

ends of living, had never been revealed to this daughter of 
the forest. She went home with a new life to begin. 

And first of all she wanted to make music. It began with 
that, and it seemed to her it must go on with that. She 
managed to learn that organs much smaller than the one 
that thrilled her soul in church could be bought, and she 
determined to be the owner of one. The purpose was laughed 
at by her parents and such of her companions as heard of it, 
but she was not to be laughed out of it. She went to church 
whenever the weather would permit, and the truth she heard 
from the pulpit made the way clear for her to go to Him 
who cleanses the heart and purifies the soul. Now it was 
all music within, and sunshine and peace. 

Her parents giving their consent, Ruth left home, and in a 
city some seventy miles away she obtained a situation as a 
waiting-maid, at very moderate wages, carefully saving all 
that she could, after sending monthly to her parents what 
would pay for the loss of her service. The family into which 
she was thrown appreciated the character and purpose of 
the strange child that had come to them, for she soon dis- 
closed the fact that she was there to earn money to buy an 
organ ; that she was to take it to her own home in the moun- 
tains, and there she would use it to please and bless those 
whom she could reach. The children in the family were 
learning music, and not only did she gratefully pick up the 
crumbs that fell from their lessons, but they loved to impart 
what they could to the good girl who waited on them so 
faithfully. And she was faithful. Never did she neglect 
her duties for the sake of the music which was the joy of her 
heart. But it came to her as if born in her. The love of it 
was more than lessons. And there was not a child in the 
house who made more rapid progress than Ruth. The chil- 
dren taught her all they learned, and her genius and enthusi- 
asm carried her far beyond them. 

Ruth served three years for that instrument! Each sum- 
mer she was allowed to spend a few days at home, from which 
her heart was not weaned by the livelier life of the city. The 
trees and the birds and the mountain rivulets were more dear 



THE MAIDEN AND HER ORGAN. 369 

to her when she returned for a while. She brightened the 
cot among the hills, gladdened her parents by her loving- 
kindness, and then would go back cheerfully to her accepted 
service. At the end of three years she had the money in hand 
to buy the instrument and books of music, and of psalms and 
hymns and spiritual songs. These were all transported by 
rail to the village where was the church in which her pious 
purpose was born. Then the team that brought wood from 
the hills drew the organ up to the home of Ruth, where she 
came with it in triumph and gratitude. And when the instru- 
ment was unpacked and set up in that humble home, the 
noble girl dedicated it to God, and with the first notes that 
she drew from it she celebrated his praise. Happy Ruth ! 

The fame of the new sensation spread and echoed among 
the mountains. The simple-hearted people came to wonder 
and to hear. Ruth could sing as well as play, and the sweet 
hymns which have thrilled millions of souls and helped them 
to heaven were now heard for the first time in those wild 
regions. Every Sunday afternoon the house was filled. 
Ruth was the leader, the teacher and the preacher. She en- 
couraged them to join their voices with hers, and gradually 
to learn to sing. She read the hymns aloud, repeated them, 
sang them a line at a time when she would have them dwell 
on the mercy and love of God in Jesus Christ his Son. She 
was, she /j', a missionary — a home missionary; for she is sing- 
ing and playing now to those mountaineers, and gently lead- 
ing them by a way they knew not to the Lamb who taketh 
away the sin of the world. 

This is my story. If this poor child could do all this that 
she might be a comfort and blessing to others, will not you 
with a thousand times better opportunities live for God and 
those around you ? 

Among those who will "join the everlasting song" I expect 
to see Ruth, the maid of the mountains, and those whom she 
has taught to sing and pray, " As well the singers as the 
players on instruments shall be there." 
24 



370 IRENMUS LETTERS. 



AT DINNER IN BATH, ENGLAND. 

LORD RADSTOCK AND THE QUEEN — DR. JOHN HALL AND 
THE AMERICANS. 

In the summer of the year 1866 I was invited to attend the 
annual meeting of the British Evangelical Alliance, to be 
held in the city of Bath, England. I was on the Continent 
at the time, but returned to England and attended the meet- 
ing. Bath is a celebrated watering-place, and in former 
times was the most fashionable of all the summer resorts. 
By former times I mean the last century and the first part of 
this, and do not refer to those ancient times when Romans 
made this place a sanitarium, and enjoyed its waters as do 
the moderns now. 

The Assembly-rooms which were once the scene of the 
gayest festivities, when the king of fashion here held his 
court and ruled with despotic sway, are still in use for public 
meetings, and are exceedingly convenient for such purpose. 
The city is beautiful, and is largely inhabited by wealthy 
families, retired from business, and enjoying the luxury of 
quiet and elegant life. The members and friends from 
abroad were welcomed with refined hospitality. We Ameri- 
cans suppose the English to be cold, reserved, and exclusive. 
This is not true of the Christian people. At that meeting I 
had invitations to so many private houses " to stay a week" 
or more, that it would have required six months or more to 
enjoy them. I have the cards now and addresses of these 
until then unknown friends. One elderly gentleman said to 
me, " Do you happen to know a person in New York by the 
name of Godwin, a printer?" " Certainly : he is a neighbor 
of mine in business, and a friend." The gentleman then said, 
" He is my nephew, and I would be glad to see you at my 
house." He soon entertained me at dinner with a party of 
ministers of the Church of England and others, whom he 
brought together to meet an American from New York. 



AT DINNER IN BATH, ENGLAND. 371 

Such a little incident is only worth alluding to as showing- 
kindliness of feeling, and dispelling the common opinion 
that Englishmen are not given to entertaining strangers. 
Every day the members dined together in the great supper- 
room, and this was the occasion for social intercourse and 
speech-making. At the close of a few remarks I spoke of 
the Queen, and said there was no country in the world 
where her character was held in higher respect as a wife, a 
mother, a widow, and a sovereign, than in the United States 
of America, and I proposed that we should rise and drink to 
the health of her Majesty the Queen. When applause had 
subsided, and the chairman was about to repeat the senti- 
ment, up rose Lord Radstock. 

Now, Lord Radstock is a very pious and eccentric member 
of a noble family. I had already seen him in the street fol- 
lowed by two dogs, with a whip in his hand, and had seen 
him on the platform with gray mixed clothes on, looking 
more like a man going hunting than to a religious meeting. 
He is a lay-preacher, and his religious sympathies are with 
the Plymouth Brethren. He has visited the chief cities of 
Europe, carried the gospel of Christ into families of the no- 
bility, and to the masses whom he assembles in great multi- 
tudes, stating in his hand-bills that after the sermon tea and 
cake will be served to all present. He never fails to have a 
full house, and a full field when he preaches out of doors. 
He is a good man, and seeks to do good. 

Up rose Lord Radstock, and said he thought it very un- 
becoming to be paying honor to any human sovereign when 
we were assembled in the service of the King of kings and 
Lord of lords. His suggestion was received with profound 
silence and evident dissatisfaction. One gentleman after 
another rose and denounced Lord Radstock 's sentiment as 
neither loyal nor Christian. They contended that it was the 
duty and ought to be the pleasure of the Alliance to assure 
her Majesty that evangelical Christians throughout her do- 
minions held her in profound esteem, and would sustain her 
with their tenderest sympathies and prayers. After such 
remarks had been repeated until the company was in a high 



372 IRE N^ us LETTERS. 

state of patriotism, the toast was drank — for the most part in 
clear, cold water. I believe no one of the two or three hun- 
dred present kept his seat except Lord Radstock. 

A gentleman next proposed that this kind suggestion from 
their American guest should be responded to, and he would 
offer "the health of the President of the United States of 
America." This was received with universal favor, but be- 
fore it was repeated by the chairman a gentleman rose at the 
farther end of the table from where I was sitting, and a great 
silence fell on the company. Was this another objector like 
Lord Radstock, who was to interpose his peculiar crotchets? 
We shall see. He said words like these, as well as I can re- 
peat them after nearly twenty years have elapsed : 

" Mr. Chairman — It is not enough to wish and pray for the 
heallh of the President of the United States. That is very 
well. But as words go, it may be a mere compliment to the 
man or the high office which for the time being he holds. 
Our friends in America have but recently come up out of a 
great conflict for the integrity of their Union. They have 
believed there was a want of sympathy with them on the 
part of some in high places in this country; but it is well to 
let them know what is the real truth in the case, that the 
heart of the Christian people of Great Britain and Ireland 
was with them through all that long and bloody war, and 
now rejoices in the re-establishment of peace, with their 
whole country one and undivided." 

The speaker, a man of stalwart form and earnest manner, 
was heard with profound attention as he proceeded in a 
strain of great eloquence for some minutes to show the 
power for good that the United States would be in the fu- 
ture, and the importance of cultivating the strongest frater- 
nal relations between the two countries. In conclusion he 
said : " I propose in addition to the health of the President 
of the United States, 

" And the integrity, the prosperity, and the perpetuity of 
the American Union." 

The whole assembly rose to their feet, and responded to 
the sentiment with the utmost enthusiasm. But long before 



AT DINNER IN BATH, ENGLAND. 373 

this point was reached I had said to an English clergyman 
near to me, " Who is he?" He answered : 

" That is the Rev. John Hall, of Dublin." 

" He belongs on my side of the water," I added. And 
Providence so favored my impression that about a year from 
that time at a similar dinner in the city of Amsterdam, in 
Holland, I had the pleasure of surprising the English and 
American delegates by announcing that this gentleman of 
Dublin, who had so eloquently eulogized the American peo- 
ple, had by telegraph received and accepted an invitation to 
become an American pastor. 

Lord Radstock, I believe, still pursues his itinerant labors 
in giving the gospel to the poor, as well as the rich. There 
is no such class of men in this country as he represents — 
men of wealth, leisure, and piety, who give their lives to 
Christian work. There are some in England who take spe- 
cific fields of labor, where the people are very poor and very 
ignorant, and these devoted laymen seek their moral and 
physical improvement by bestowing upon them time and 
self-sacrificing toil. And it is certainly an employment quite 
as well becoming a nobleman of wealth and leisure, as sailing 
a yacht, driving a four-in-hand, or betting on a horse-race. 
We might have many laymen to do personal Christian work 
all the time, if they would be content with what wealth they 
have, and not seek to lay up more, and seek till they die in 
the quest. 

Dr. John Hall continues in the same American field to 
which he was called, and has worked easily into the Ameri- 
can Christian system which'he understood before he came. 
He has had the good sense and tact to work along the lines 
of usefulness that he found, and to lay down new ones when 
the old were not enough, and no one can deny that his great 
abilities and his practical wisdom have been appreciated in 
the country which is his by affection and intelligent choice. 
And this is the story of the two after-dinner orators in the 
Assembly-rooms at Bath, England, in the year i866. 



374 IRENAiUS LETTERS. 



GOING INTO THE COUNTRY. 

It is common, about this time in the year, when dwellers 
in the city are beginning to migrate into the country, and 
dwellers in the country are putting themselves and their 
houses into summer order, for ministers to preach, and 
newspaper men to write homilies on the subject. 

I could turn back on the files of the Observer and find some 
forty or fifty monologues that would answer quite as well as 
the one about to be inflicted upon my patient readers. And 
there is nothing new under the sun to be said or done. What 
is was, and what has been will be ; and so it goes on year 
after year, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, in one 
endless circle. We have no continuing city, and this is not 
our rest. 

A very limited number of the inhabitants of a great city 
like this go into the country for the summer. And a large 
number of these are not church-goers. Yet the departure 
of the members of Christian congregations is so great as to 
seriously interfere with the regular operations of the church, 
and in many instances to interrupt the services altogether. 
Weoftencry out against this as an evil that should be resisted 
and remedied. Well, there are some things in this world 
that we must put up with, and this matter of church-closing 
in summer in great cities is one of them. It is much easier 
to find fault with it than to find a remedy for it. Those 
whose duties or wishes keep them in town through the sea- 
son feel the inconvenience sorely, but it seems to be una- 
voidable in the conditions of modern city life. This may be 
said with truth, that there is no Sunday in the year when 
there are not open churches sufficient to afford ample room 
for all in the city who wish to hear the gospel, and where all 
who go will be more than welcome. It is well to bear this 
in mind, as also another fact, that very many churches are 
never closed, unless when repairs are necessary. I take it 
for granted, then, that the present state of things, in spite of 
its drawbacks and positive disadvantages, will continue, ancj 



GOING INTO THE COUNTRY. 375 

pastors and people ought to be diligent in reducing the evils 
attending it. to the lowest possible degree. 

The poor who depend largely on the kind benefactions of 
their rich patrons and friends often suffer from the forget- 
fulness of those who have taken care of them to make suita- 
ble provision for their pensioners. I have known rich people 
to send from the mountains of Switzerland money to poor 
people whom they were accustomed to care for when at 
home. Some wealthy congregations in this city take up 
collections repeatedly for their own poor, though it would be 
supposed there is not a poor person in the church. God's 
people, having one Father who is in heaven, ought to be one 
family on earth, and when one poor member suffers it should 
be a cause of suffering to those who are able to relieve. Nor 
will it make the pleasure less at the sea-shore or in the moun- 
tains, to know that the hearts of some who cannot have that 
luxury are yet comforted with such good things as they in 
their confinement can enjoy. And all the while that you are 
away, there are some good people in town seeking to give to 
the children of the poor and to the women a nip of fresh air, 
by an excursion on the water, or a few days' board and lodg- 
ing at the shore or out in the country. It were well to give 
a good round sum to these kindly charities. I do not be- 
lieve that a day on a boat amounts to anything for the per- 
manent health of a child, but the little fellow gets lots of fun 
out of it, and that he enjoys for many a day afterwards. And 
fun is very useful in its way, especially for those who do not 
have a surplus of it. Mr. Parsons managed a mission for 
some years with great good in it, when he went out into the 
country', gathered the people into a church, and asked them 
to take a boy or two and give him board and lodging for 
three or four weeks : thus he provided for thousands who 
were permanently benefited by life on a farm and in the 
woods. The boys and girls enjoyed it immensely, and their 
kind friends in the country had their reward ir^ the Saviour's 
promise and blessing. 

Some city Christian people look upon religious work 
among their neighbors and friends in the country as unbe- 



376 IREN^US LETTERS. 

coming and offensive. It is sometimes so done as to deserve 
such a distinction. But there is a way of doing things that 
pleases God and man, and commends the beauty and power 
of the Christian religion to all with whom a warm-hearted, 
sensible Christian comes in contact. There is no describing 
it, no laying down rules or making out a programme. But 
the Christian whose religion is known and read of all men 
sheds the silent influence of his cheerful, holy example like 
fragrance all around him. In hotels especially the gay 
world asserts itself with impudent forwardness that deserves 
rebuke. The parlors, which are the common property of all, 
are almost invariably usurped by a little set who are fond of 
dancing, and they make the rooms uninhabitable for the 
evening by the great majority of the guests who wish to be 
quiet and to enjoy the evening in reading and conversation. 
There should be a freedom-of-worship bill for hotels, securing 
to the people their rights to be unmolested, and breaking up 
this monopoly of the few. 

There might go forth into the country and into the wide 
world a mighty missionary power if all the Christian people 
who go away from home in the summer would exhale the 
sweet perfume of a holy life in their daily walk and conver- 
sation. And they would find in every neighborhood where 
they sojourn, and in every circle into which they come, con- 
genial hearts burning with a desire for Christian sympathy 
and intercourse. Thus they would, like coals gathered into 
a heap, kindle and warm one another and encourage to 
higher and better living. There are a great many more good 
people in this world than we are apt to suppose. Our fellow- 
traveller, a stranger, may be our own brother in the faith. 
Certainly he is our fellow-sinner, and has needs in common 
with us. 

And so we go from place to place, here to-day and there 
to-morrow, but each day one day's march nearer home, our 
Father's house, where the weary are at rest. Pilgrims now 
as all our fathers were, there our pilgrimage is ended, and 
the heavenly cou7itry is the golden city of our God. There 
is something inexpressibly comforting in the words, " They 



A LITTLE BEHINDHAND. 'ly'J'J 

shall go no more out." Forever with the Lord. That is the 
Eternal City. He that dwells in it shall never say, " I am 
sick." No change of scene or air or food to recruit a wasted 
frame! Life, health, immortal youth shall crown the days 
of him who is a Christian citizen in that celestial clime. 



A LITTLE BEHINDHAND; 

OR, A GOOD RESOLUTION FOR THE NEW YEAR, 

" Grandpa, when does a man have three hands?" 

This question was put by a child to her grandfather, in the 
midst of the family circle on Christmas evening. They were 
all merry with innocent fun and chii:-chat. Giving and guess- 
ing riddles was one of the entertaining pastimes of the hour. 
The grandfather repeated the child's question slowly, and, 
after thinking a moment, he said. " I give it up." The bright 
child in great glee cried out, "A man has three hands when 
he has a right hand and a left hand and gets a little behind- 
hand." 

All hands laughed heartily at grandfather's failure to guess, 
and he looked so grave over it, they laughed the more mer- 
rily. 

But the "head of the house" did not seem to join very 
heartily in the amusement, and they rallied him by asking if 
it was not a fair conundrum. 

" Certainly : not only fair, but excellent : the play on the 
word is very neat, but it has set me thinking of what comes 
of getting a little behindhand, and some other time, when 
you want to hear it, I will give you a little sermon or lecture 
on the subject." 

" Now — now — let us have it now !" they all exclaimed ; but 
he knew children too well for that, and saying that his ser- 
mon would keep, he told them to go on with their riddles and 
stories. 

The next Sabbath evening, when they were all in the par- 



3/8 IREN.-EUS LETTERS. 

lor, the bright little girl who had puzzled her grandfather 
with the conundrum loolced up from the book she was read- 
ing, and said, with a smile : 

" Grandpa, are you not getting a little behindhand with 
that sermon you promised us ?" 

" You shall have it now, if you wish ;" and all sat still and 
attentive while grandfather began : 

"To-morrow will be the first day of a new year, and a good 
time to take a fresh start. To begin well is half the doing, 
whatever it is. The habit of being on time, never a minute 
behindhand, is one of the greatest helps to success in life. 
While, on the other hand, to get into the way of delaying, 
keeping others waiting, not being prompt, punctual, and 
ready, is the secret cause of failure in ten thousand cases, 
many of which I have seen in the course of my life. We 
notice it in children. Wliat you are in the morning, you will 
be at noon, and probably at night. 'The child is fatlier of 
the man,' ' Just as the twig is bent,' etc. The family meet in 
the morning for worship and breakfast ; one child is late. 
She is usually late, the same one. She was behindhand in 
getting herself ready ; the rest waited for her a few moments 
and then went on without her, and presently she came, dis- 
turbing all and making herself disagreeable and them un- 
comfortable. The boy with such a disposition is late at school, 
not prepared with his lessons, always just a little behind- 
hand in everything. Perhaps he goes to college or into busi- 
ness, trade or profession, and if he is dependent on his own 
exertions he makes a failure in everything. 

" Forty years ago I knew two smart boys, helpers in a 
grocery- store. They were brothers. They seemed to be 
made of steel springs, so quick, prompt. and decisive were 
they in filling every order. They were poor boys, apprentices 
then. But they worked as if the concern was their own, and 
success depended on their energy, push, and faithfulness. 
Now they live on one of the fashionable avenues of New York, 
in their own large mansions, retired from the grocery busi- 
ness in which they made their fortunes. Holding important 
trusts, they are useful and respected citizens and Christians, 



A LITTLE BEHINDHAND. 379 

They owe their success solely, under God, to their own 
promptness in performing every promise, in being always 
ahead rather than behind time. And there a.e mechanics 
and tradesmen with whom I once had dealings and now have 
deserted, because they never would fulfil an order in season, 
would not send a thing home to me when they promised, 
and invariably kept me waiting whatever might be my dis- 
tress to be served. This vice runs in the blood sometimes, 
and whole families are distinguished by taking it easy, 'time 
enough yet' being their motto and rule. They drop behind 
in the race of life. They would be run over if some one did 
not pick them up and help them on. Half the world has 
this work to do, besides doing its own. In the absence of 
positive crime, this habit of taking it easy causes the poverty 
and failure of the greater part of the human family. With 
the same chances, with usual health and wits, in the same 
field, one man succeeds and another makes a dead failure. 
And why .-' Because one takes time by the forelock, was ever 
prompt, and therefore prosperous. The other was always 
a little behindhand, and by and by so far behind as to be 
counted out as of no account. 

" When you are old enough yourselves to meet and move 
with men and women in business and good works of life, you 
will soon find some who are late at the appointed time, who 
come bustling in ten or fifteen minutes after the hour, say- 
ing, ' I had no idea it was so late,' 'My watch never deceived 
me before,' ' I am very sorry to keep you waiting.' All such 
managers are poor timber to make boards of. If they had 
the grace of resignation, they would make room for some- 
body not always a little behindhand. 

" The train starts at nine in the morning, and they reach 
the station two minutes late and are left. The boat goes at 
five, and they arrive in time to be laughed at by the passen- 
gers who see them wiping the perspiration from their heated 
brows. I knew a Georgia preacher who was holding forth in 
an asylum to a congregation of the insane. He described a 
man on a scaffold about to be hanged, while in the distance 
comes a messenger on horseback bringing a pardon. But the 



380 IRENAiUS LETTERS. 

hour of fate was just at hand : a minute or two and it would 
be too late. The preacher drew out the agony by talking 
and talking, till one of his crazed hearers cried, ' Can't you 
hurry up a little ? They'll hang that man if you don't.' And 
when I see people dilly-dallying, wasting precious time in 
doing nothing, I long to tell them to hurry up, for life, soul, 
salvation may be lost if they are only a little behindhand. 
It is so in every relation, calling and duty in life. It is the 
one principle on which the prize of success in this world de- 
pends, and immortal glory beyond. Now is the accepted time. 
To-day, if you will hear it, is the day of salvation. You may 
as well be a year, or a hundred years, or a whole eternity too 
late as to be only a little behindhand. When once the Mas- 
ter of the house has shut the door, you may knock long and 
loud, and with a great and exceeding bitter cry may call to 
him, 'Lord, Lord, open unto me: I am only a few minutes 
late : I heard the door close as I came to the threshold. O 
Master, Lord, open and let me in.' And he from within will 
answer, ' Depart ; I never knew you.' 

" You were never one of his. When he called, you were 
not ready. When he warned, you did not heed. When he 
entreated, you did not yield. When he shut the door, you 
were a little behindhand. And as it was with them when 
the flood came, and in the cities of the plain when the rain of 
fire descended, so will it be with you who put off and put off 
until a convenient season the work of to-day. 

" There, children dear, you have had the sermon I promised. 
The new year begins to-morrow, and the resolution I want 
you to make is this: ' With God's good help, for which I will 
daily pray, I will always be on hand, at the moment, ready 
for every duty, and will do with my might what I am called 
to do.' 

" Good-night, all," said the grandfather ;" God bless you 
all with a happy New Year." 

" Happy New Year to you, grandpa," they cried in chorus, 
and went off to bed. 



PROCRUSTES, THE STRETCHER. 381 



PROCRUSTES, THE STRETCHER, 

AND HOW HE MADE ALL MEN THE SAME LENGTH. ' 

Once there was a man, or there is a story in the Greek 
that there was once a man, who had the name of Procrustes, 
which, being interpreted, signifies " a stretcher." But stretch- 
ing was not his only plan to change the longitude of those 
who fell into his power. Being a robber in Attica, where 
the profession of highwaymen still flourishes as it did three 
thousand years ago, it was his custom, when travelling gen- 
tlemen fell into his hands, to make them, or to try to make 
them, into men of the same length. For this purpose he had an 
iron bed constructed, and on this he caused his captives to lie 
down. If they were too long for the bed, he cut off from their 
legs enough to make them fit ; and if they were not long enough, 
he applied the pulley and screws, and stretched them till they 
just filled the bill or bed. This was a cruel process, and a 
very foolish one too, for either process, cutting or stretching, 
must have spoiled the victim, making him of no use to the 
tyrant or to anybody else. His whim was gratified, but his 
patients perished under his surgical treatment. The tyrant's 
name was Polypemon, and the surname of Procrustes was 
given to him on account of the disagreeable habit he had of 
interfering with the natural growth of persons who were so 
unfortunate as to get into his bed. 

The myths of the ancients are rarely without a moral. Cer- 
tainly the immoral often saturates them. But in many a story 
that has come down, in oral or written legend, we have ales- 
son full of beauty and force whereunto we do well to take heed. 
The days of such monsters have passed away, but there is 
something still lingering in the minds of men that preserves 
the Procrustean bed as a symbol. If there were nothing to 
resemble the practice of the Attican brigand, his name and 
his surgery would long since have ceased to figure in the 
speech of mankind. 



382 IREN^US LETTERS. 

God made men of one blood ; therefore we are all of one 
family, brethren, bound to help and love one another ; all 
have the same Father in heaven, all have the same rights to 
the love and service of our brethren, under that universal 
golden law that requires us to do as we would be done by„ 
In this sense we are born and reared to fit the bed of Pro- 
crustes. And here the likeness ends. There are no two 
men or women alike. Nothing is more wonderful to me in 
the world of nature than the likeness and unlikeness of the 
human face. What confusion and often misery come from 
mistaken identity ! Endless lawsuits with intense suffering 
have sprung from the claims that have been set up by bad 
men to be others; parents, husbands, children, heirs of 
property. Innocent men have been charged with foul crimes 
because of their supposed resemblance to real criminals. 
When I walk the streets of a great city, meeting strange 
faces every step, I am wondering all the while that no two 
of them are just alike ; they have more points of resemblance 
than of difference, but they are dissimilar : each one is him- 
self, and not the other: all are one species, each with his 
marks to distinguish him from all the rest. And as God 
has made no two men alike, what is the use of trying to 
stretch or shorten our fellows to make them conform to our 
standard of height ? A dreary uniformity in mind and 
matter would be unbearable. Variety is the spice of life. 
Yet we are given to the opinion that our taste is the true 
measure of right, beauty, duty, and fitness. If the minister 
preaches to otir satisfaction, he is all right ; and if not, he is 
altogether out of the way, and we keep a bed of Procrustes 
on which we would like to stretch him. So the minister's 
wig offended the ladies, and he sent it to their sewing-society 
with permission for them to clip it to their taste. The poor 
thing was shorn of all its beauty, and was generally demor- 
alized, until it pleased none of them, and was unfit to crown 
the pastor's head. Out in a Western city recently a pastor 
preached for the first time in a pulpit-gown, and the papers 
say that the congregation was convulsed as they would have 
been had the pastor preached in his shirt-sleeves. The 



PliOCKUSTES, THE STRETCHER. 383 

gown and the anti-gown parties contended until the latter 
triumphed, and the gown was laid aside as part of the milli- 
nery of religion. Why may not a minister's dress be safely 
left to his own discretion ? And so with all the mint, anise, 
and cummin of the church. Mrs. Jones remonstrates with 
her neighbor, Mrs. Robinson, because of her conformity to 
the world in wearing feathers in her hat: and to Mrs. R.'s 
inquiry where to draw the line between what is worldly and 
what is pious in the matter of dress, Mrs. Jones says, " You 
must draw the line somewhere, and I draw it on feathers." 
She wanted her neighbor to be cut down to her own meas- 
ure. 

"The rarity of Christian charity" is the topic for satire and 
complaint, and poor human nature gives too much occasion 
for the scandal. In matters of opinion and of conduct it is 
hard to admit that one who does not see with our eyes may 
after all be nearer the standard of infinite truth and right 
than we are. It is the beam in our own eye that obstructs 
the sight of goodness and even of glory in another, and dis- 
torts the vision until the lines of harmony and beauty are 
made to run criss-cross to the ruin of our brother's counte- 
nance. 

The church and the world have been all muddled with a 
doctrine of social equality that has no reason and no religion 
for its support. As God has made no two faces just alike, 
so he has set society in families and in such social relations 
as husbands and wives and children, servants, superiors, in- 
feriors, and equals. The gospels and the letters of the in- 
spired apostles teach the duties and privileges of each and 
every individual. Before the law of God and man they are 
all equal, and the service which each owes to the other is 
perfect freedom. But that liberty is within the law of God, 
and all right human law is conformed to the divine. What 
is called the "Woman's Rights" doctrine is only an orga- 
nized conspiracy to apply the Procrustean process to human 
society. It would be just as sensible to organize a children's 
rights movement and attempt to put old heads on young 
shoulders. Procrustes was a tyrant, and whoever tries to 



384 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

apply his despotism to men, women, or children is a tyrant 
or a fool. I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith 
to be content. Infinite wisdom and love made us what we 
are and formed the round and shining sphere on which we 
are placed. Revolving in it and with it, like the stars in 
their celestial courses, we shall move without collision or 
friction, each fulfilling his appointed work, " forever singing 
as we shine, ' The hand that made us is divine.' " But when 
we get discontented and rebellious and fractious, those who 
are short curtailing the tall, and children impatient of the 
restraint of childhood, women trying to be men, and men 
seeking to be the greatest and unwilling to bide their time, 
when they that serve strive to be independent of their duties, 
and the poor quarrel with God and their race because they 
were not born in wealth and cradled in gold, then come dis- 
content and conflict and misery and despair. Rebellion is 
in it. Hell begins with war against the order of God in 
nature. 

We are not all cast in the same mould. Some are wise 
and some are otherwise. One man has ten talents, another 
five, and the most have only one. But they with one, if 
faithful in its use, are the most useful. Unknown to fame, 
silent workers, building strong the walls of Church and 
State, they are the great middle class, on whom the com- 
monwealth, civil and sacred, reposes in security and peace. 
We cannot all be alike. But it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be. We might be more and better than we are. And 
we never shall be satisfied till we awake in the likeness of 
God. 



"IS THE OLD GENTLEMAN DEAD?" 385 



"IS THE OLD GENTLEMAN DEAD?"* 

While at Saratoga last week I heard of the death of a 
friend and made a short journey to attend the funeral. The 
gentleman in whose family the death had occurred is my 
kinsman, and he resides on the bank of the Hudson River, 
some miles from the railroad station. On reaching the sta- 
tion I took a hackney-coach and was driven to the house. 
It is a large mansion, with pillars and piazza in front, in the 
midst of lawn and shade-trees, with a circular carriage-path 
from the road to the door. The gentleman has resided in 
it some forty years or more, is well on in life, and well known 
to all the country-side. 

As we approached the mansion the coachman noticed 
crape on the door — a sign that death was in the house. As 
he opened the carriage-door he asked me anxiously, " Is the 
old gentleman dead ?" I told him no — that it was another 
member of the family. He said, " I was afraid it was the old 
gentleman ; he is a good man ; everybody loves him." 

Such a tribute from such a source was exceedingly pleasant, 
rendered so heartily to one whom I had known from child- 
hood. I was glad to know that he was held in such general 
esteem that a hack-driver was pained by the thought that 
perhaps he was dead, and was ready to bear such testimony 
to his worth. 

He is a man of wealth, and one of the class of men — not 
an overcrowded class — who have learned the true use of 
money, and having learned, delight to practise it. Sur- 
rounded with all the appliances for his own comfort, living 
in perfect simplicity amidst the abundance with which God 
has favored him, he does not live for himself. That is the 
secret of his success in securing the esteem of his fellow- 

* This was the last " Irenieus Letter" ever prepared by Dr. Prime, and 
was written within two weeks of his decease, which occurred July 18, 1885. 

2S 



386 IREN^US LETTERS. 

men. A good name is said to be better than riches, and it 
is certainly a great thing to have both. There is no man 
more generally ill-spoken of in the community than he who 
has great wealth and no disposition to make a good use 
of it. All around us, as I stay with this friend, are the evi- 
dences of good that he is doing with the money that he might 
call his own, but which he prefers to use as a steward in- 
trusted with it for the benefit of others. Hospitals, churches, . 
colleges, individuals, public improvements, private charities, 
are a few of the many recipients of his bounty. Without 
ostentation and unsolicited, he seeks and finds those objects 
which his own good judgment assures him are the most 
likely to be worthy of his assistance, and permanently z/j^z//. 

And right there is the true end of life. Usefulness is to 
be sought, aimed at, and worked for ; happiness is to come 
of itself in the pursuit of usefulness. The mistake the most 
persons make is in studying to be happy. They should let 
that care for itself. It is not a state of mind to be cultivated, 
but to be enjoyed in the midst of duty done. To a rational, 
virtuous mind wealth does not bring enjoyment if it is em- 
ployed merely in the gratification of the senses. Misery may 
be the result of such living. But in the judicious use of 
wealth for the good of others, the true man finds that comfort 
and glow of soul which the few, the favored few, can alone 
afTord to buy. 

One of the most fearful signs of our times is the rapid 
spread of socialism, or communism, in the minds of the poor. 
Bad men who are not poor use the miserable doctrine to get 
the favor of the masses, who are easily persuaded that they 
are wronged when others have more money than they. 
Equality would not last a week if it were once decreed ; but 
the cry is popular, and the spirit of it is revolution and 
anarchy. And the rich must be made to understand and to 
feel that they promote this spirit if they continue to hoard 
great possessions, and use them only for their own selfish 
enjoyments. Envy, discontent, hatred, and robbery, with all 
evil, are begotten by the pride and folly of the rich, who 
imagine that wealth makes them better than the poor. Out 



"IS THE OLD GENTLEMAN DEAD?" 38/ 

of this discontent come the curses of modern socialism. 
Laws cannot cure the evil. All the schemes of philanthropy 
to regulate the price of labor or the price of food are vain 
and deceptive. There is no remedy except in the prevalence 
of that spirit which springs up in the heart of the man who 
learns that he is not his own, that his wealth is not his own, 
that he ought to love his neighbor as himself, and that there 
is a high and holy sense in which he is bound to be his 
brother's keeper. We may not reason in favor of the safety 
of this system of inequality from the fact that in aristocratic 
countries ages have passed away in peace while the rich have 
been immensely rich and the poor most miserably poor. For 
the spread of ideas has wrought a tremendous change in the 
minds of men, and new theories of rights and property and 
obligation have been diffused by conversation, lectures, and 
the press. This change has been felt by legislators, who are 
governed by it in law-making. Personal rights are invaded 
by the sovereign power. Courts are dominated by the unseen 
influence of the new philosophy. Rich men should bear in 
mind that they hold their property at the will of the law- 
making power, and legislatures are often controlled by the 
comnmne. 

One example, like that of the "old gentleman" whom the 
driver of my carriage was ready to praise and to mourn, does 
more to moderate and guide the public sentiment of a county 
and community than lectures and newspapers. " Everybody 
loves him," said the humble citizen who opened the door for 
me; and it was his goodness which won their love. They 
did not envy and hate him because he was rich, increased in 
goods, and had need of nothing. They rejoiced the rather 
that he had a handsome mansion with all the comforts that 
wealth can furnish, because he has sympathies with those 
who have not the good things of this life in great abundance. 
and delights in sharing his substance with them. Therefore, 
the conclusion to which we shall come in our consideration 
of the irrepressible conflict between the rich and the poor, 
between capital and labor, is that the only practicable solu- 
tion lies in the application of the gospel law of love. When 



388 IRENMUS LETTERS. 

this becomes the rule of life, a millennium of peace, righteous- 
ness, contentment, and consequent happiness will begin its 
blessed reign. 

This was the natural current of my thoughts as I crossed 
the Hudson at the going-down of the sun, and in the early- 
evening returned to my lodgings at "Garden View," by the 
wells of Saratoga. 



FACSIMILE. 
The following pages contain a fac simile of two sheets of the last Irenaeus 
Letter, " Is the Old Gentleman Dead ? " as it was written for the compositor, by 
Dr. S. Iren^us Prime. It is a fair sample of the manuscript which Dr. Prime 
regularly furnished to the press, with the exception that it is somewhat reduced 
in size in order to come within the page of this book. 








U*^ ^A-^-^^<:^x ^-^4^^ 



^/Uj^t..y^ /^U^-^^^L,-^l^^.uS^ (^C-C^ X^«— ^-ti.*^^ 







Dr. Prime's PuWished Works. 



This list contains the titles of most of Dr. Prime's Books. 
Besides these, he edited, compiled, and contributed to many other 
volumes, some of which are of permanent value and interest. 



ELIZABETH THORNTON, THE FLOWER AND FRUIT OF 
EARLY PIETY. New York: M. W. Dodd. 1840. 

RECORDS OF A VILLAGE PASTOR. Massachusetts Sabbath School 
Society. 1843. 

THE PRODIGAL RECLAIMED ; Or, The Sinner's Ruin and 
Recovery. Massachusetts Sabbath School Society. 1843. 

THE MARTYR MISSIONARY OF ERROMANGA ; Or, The Life 
of John Williams. Abridged. American Sunday-School Union. 1844. 

THE LITTLE BURNT GIRL ; A Memoir of Catherine Howell. 
American Sunday-School Union. 1845. 

GEORGE SOMERVILLE ; Or, The Boy who would be a Min- 
ister. American Sunday-School Union. 1846. 

GUIDE TO THE SAVIOUR. American Sunday-School Un;pn. 1846. 
Republished in London by the Religious Tract Society. 

THE OLD WHITE MEETING HOUSE; Or, Reminiscences of a 
Country Congregation. Robert Carter. 1846. 

LIFE IN NEW YORK. Robert Carter* Brothers. 1846. 

THE GOSPEL AMONG THE BECHUANAS AND OTHER 
TRIBES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA, American Sunday-School 
Union. 1846. 

THE NESTORIANS OF PERSIA ; With an account of the Massa- 
cres by the Koords, American Sunday-School Union. 1846, 

THE HIGHLAND PASTOR ; a Sequel to George Somerville, 1847 

HENRY WOOD ; Or, The First Step in the Downward Road- 
American Sunday-School Union. 1848. 

BOSSES AND THEIR BOYS : Or, The Duties of Masters and 
Apprentices, American Sunday-School Union. 1853. 

SABBATH SONGS FOR THE USE OF FAMILIES AND SUN- 
DAY-SCHOOLS. Leavitt & Allen. 1853. 

THOUGHTS ON THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN. With aa 
Appendix selected from various authors. Anson D. F. Randolph. 



THE SMITTEN HOUSEHOLD. A book for the Afflicted. A. D. F. 
Randolph & Co. 

TRAVELS IN EUROPE AND THE EAST. Harper & Brothers. 1855. 

LETTERS FROM SWITZERLAND, Sheldon & Company. 1S60. 

THE POWER OF PRAYER. Illustrated in the Fulton Street Prayer 
Meetings and elsewhere. New York : Charles Scribner. 185S. Repub- 
lished in London; republished in Paris in French; republished in Cape of 
Good Hope in Dutch; republished in East Indies in Tamil. 

THE BIBLE IN THE LEVANT; Or, The Life and Letters of the 
Rev. C. N. RIGHTER, Agent of the American Bible Society 
in the Levant. New York: Sheldon & Company. 1859. 

FIVE YEARS OF PRAYER WITH THE ANSWERS. New York: 
Harper & Brothers. 

FIFTEEN YEARS OF PRAYER IN THE FULTON STREET 
MEETING. Scribner, Armstrong & Company. 

ANDERSON'S ANNALS OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. Abridged and 
Continued. Robert Carter & Bros. 1849. 

MEMOIRS OF REV. NICHOLAS MURRAY, D.D. (KIRWAN). 
Harper & Brothers. 1862. 

WALKING WITH GOD — THE LIFE HID WITH CHRIST. A. 
D. F. Randolph & Co. 1872. 

THE ALHAMBRA AND THE KREMLIN. New York : A. D. F. 
Randolph & Co. 1873. 

UNDER THE TREES. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1874. 

SONGS OF THE SOUL. Gathered out of many lands and ages. Robert 
Carter & Bros. 1874. 

LIFE OF SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, LL.D., Inventor of the Elec- 
tric Magnetic Recording Telegraph. D. Appletbn & Co. 1874. 

IREN^US LETTERS. Gathered from the " New York Observer," and 
published by that Company in 1880. 

PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER. Illustrated in the twenty - five years of 
Fulton Street Prayer Meeting. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1882. 



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